By: David Sieracki
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This is a Ghillie suit I made for one of my nephew’s SSAMs.
For the garnish, I was trying for the distressed burlap appearance similar the suits sold by Custom Concealment Inc., URL: www.ghillie.com. The base is just a flight suit with dyed elastic cord stitched through it for attaching foliage. The garnish is made from muslin dyed a dirty brown using Coco Brown and Black. The fabric was cut into narrow strips. A thinned water-based fabric adhesive was applied, by brush, in a line down the middle of each strip. The outer threads were stripped away until only the middle two or three are left. If the strips are made long, 5-6 inches, and the glue is permitted to dye overnight, the strips tend to stay fairly flat. However, if you use shorter strips and start fraying as soon as the glue starts to hold, the strips tend to curl, giving some additional depth to the suit. The strips were just glued to the flight suit. The hat is a boonie cap covered with garnish with a veil made from a piece of dyed nylon. The cover for the rifle is brown fabric sewn into shape and covered like the suit. I over did the garnish to make this more forgiving for my nephew, (we take turns hiding this figure in the wetlands near where I live, and it works quite well). The picture where I used the flash, (or misused) actually exaggerates the color contrast. The suit doesn't look quite that good. I originally created three different shades of fabric for the suit, but found that it actually made it easier to find, so I removed them. I think that if I did this again, I would try dyeing the fabric a base color, then over-spray with cold-water dyes to create color variation within each strip. If someone tries this approach, I'd love to see it. -- David Sieracki |
| Outstanding work David! Thanks for sending this in and sharing it with us! -- GL |
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