How to Quiver
If there were only two cartoon shows I could recommend to anyone, no more, no less, my choices would be Avatar: The Last Airbender and Young Justice. Very different shows, but both have an interesting world, a compelling storyline, and incredibly fascinating characters that develop very naturally as the show progresses.
I can understand why Young Justice was canceled (although I’m still not happy about it). It got really dark near the end of the second season; it became a teen/adult show, rather than the target audience of the channel it was aired on. But the darkness and character growth is so fantastically written and voice acted and the ending… just… feels. If you haven’t watched Young Justice yet, go watch it. I’ll wait.
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All caught up? Excellent, we can continue.
I was immediately dra
wn to Artemis because of her attitude and badassery. She’s determined, fierce, sassy, and confident, although she definitely has her moments of weakness and uncertainty. I identified with her tentativeness to let people in, to trust them, and to learn that it’s okay to be vulnerable sometimes.
This tutorial is going to focus on Artemis's quiver and arrows. If you have any questions about how I made the rest of the costume, feel free to send me a message via Facebook, tumblr, email, or carrier pigeon!
The quiver was technically the first thing that I started on. I wasn’t sure exactly how I wanted to make it, though, until one morning while I was eating breakfast and gazing halfheartedly at my oatmeal container... which was about the right radius and exactly half the length that I wanted for the quiver. Inspiration struck!
Thankfully, my roommate had not yet thrown out her old oatmeal container, so I stole it and transferred the remaining oats of mine into a ziplock back. I then immediately went to my craft room and started hacking away at the containers.
I cut out the bottom of both to make the body continuous so I could stuff things into it, including arrows. I added some EVA ribbing to the sides to maintain structural integrity, and marked out where I wanted the straps to go.
At this point, I used the hottest new craft foam technique to make the quiver appear leather-y! Seriously, check Lost Wax out on YouTube. Not only are his tutorials interesting and useful, they're also a ton of fun to watch!
I used this technique on a nice big rectangle of craft foam and then wrapped it around the quiver, securing it with hot glue.
The straps were… an adventure. The fabric I chose was a black, two-way stretch pleather, with a light quilt batting to give them more dimension and comfort.
First, I made a pattern by tracing my ski backpack straps. I stuck these onto my mannequin to make sure they laid how I wanted them to.
I then cut out the pattern: twice out of the pleather and once out of quilt batting. I sewed the quilt batting to the wrong side of one pleather strap. Then I sewed the other pleather strap to it, right sides together, along the two sides.
Protip: paperclips, binder clips, and bobbypins all work very well for fabric that you can't pin through.
For a nice finish, I turned the resulting fabric tube inside out and top-stitched along the edges to make them lie flat. To keep the pleather from sticking to my presser foot, I used a tiny bit of Vaseline along the stitching line.
Protip: paperclips, binder clips, and bobbypins all work very well for fabric that you can't pin through.
With much swearing, I attached strapping and buckles to the pleather. Sewing through 4 layers of pleather, a layer of quilt batting, and 1-2 layers of sturdy webbing straps was very much NOT fun. Do not recommend.
After that was done, I had some straps! All that remained was to attach them to the quiver. And after much glue and more swearing, I had succeeded!
At this point I realized I probably should have plasti-dipped and painted the quiver before attaching the straps. Ah well, you live and you learn. Instead, I covered the straps with saran wrap while I plasti-dipped. The quiver was then painted with green stripes and sealed.
***TAKE PICTURE OF QUIVER KTHX****
Now, how about them arrows? I used 5/16” dowel rods, green feathers, black thread, some craft foam, model magic, and a styrofoam block.
I only made two full-length arrows for posing purposes: a trick arrow and an actual arrowhead. I made the arrowhead out of craft foam, plastidipped and painted. The trick arrow is just a cylinder made of model magic with hot glue and craft foam detailing.
For the rest of the arrows, I used a styrofoam block carved into a circle with the same diameter as my quiver. I put some heat-sealed EVA foam over the top so I could spray paint it without the paint eating away at the styrofoam.
I first painted the dowel rods black with spray paint, then went about the business of fletching them. First, I sorted all of my feathers into left-hand feathers and right-hand feathers, because I wanted all of the fletching curving the same way on each arrow.
I then sliced off the smaller side of the feathers and trimmed them into a shape reminiscent of Artemis’s arrow fletchings. I then hot-glued them to the arrow shafts (this was before I knew of the magic that is contact cement) in groups of four.
I realized about halfway through the decorative arrows that arrows are supposed to have three feathers, not four. :P Whoops! I rationalized that nobody would be able to see exactly how may feathers each arrow had while in the quiver, and resolved to make sure the arrows I was to pose with only had three feathers.
After the feathers were glued, I wrapped the ends of the feathers in black thread to cover the edges of the fletching. And vwah-lah! The arrow shafts were complete! Once the half-arrows were finished, I put a dab of hot glue on the tip and shoved them into the foam.
This method had two advantages: I didn’t have to make 15 full arrows, and all the arrows shafts look very nice and evenly spaced rather than having them all collapse onto each other. Because cartoons have weird physics and Artemis’s arrows seem to magnetically repel each other while they reside in her quiver.
I had some issues with the arrows being top-heavy and falling out of the quiver, but that was fixed by adding some stoppers around the top of the quiver to keep the styrofoam block in.
The arrows still wiggle around a little bit, but they've survived two conventions without noticeable listing, and I call that a success! Adding extra things into the quiver (my wallet, jacket, cell phone, etc.) keeps the quiver more bottom heavy, which also helps to counteract the listing.
All in all, I’m really, really happy with how the quiver turned out. Thank the Quaker (oats)!
… I’ll show myself out.
