Alrighty, had another couple productive days, so I made myself a vest to put the armor on.
I started with some rich brown duck fabric. It's very similar to canvas... except that duck has a higher thread count.
Because I wanted it to FEEL like a real protective garment, I made the vest with a double thickness of the fabric. Now, it wouldn't stop a bullet, but it IS pretty resistant to slicing. So if I get in a knife fight I should be all good.
I'm no seamstress, so I don't bother making patterns. I just kinda dive right in, and trust my experience and knowledge of sewing tricks to pull me through. Usually, I have pretty good luck, especially on simple garments like this vest, which turned out well!
I applied snaps to the back of my armor and the matching snaps to the vest, then tossed the vest into the wash to soften it up. I SHOULD have washed the fabric before I even began, because the wash shrunk the darn thing by an inch or so, so now it's pretty tight on me. Not so tight that it's unwearable, but tight enough that it's noticeable. The solution to this problem is for me to lose some #$%^&* weight!
And then we moved onto my favorite part, the weathering. Again, it's all in the layers. I started with a few spritzes and drips of bleach. The duck sucked up the bleach like crazy, and actually turned white... a bit overkill, I didn't like that result, so I used some brown shoe polish and wiped it over the worst of the bleach spots to tone the white down a hair.
I continued with the brown shoe polish, using a pighair bristle shoe polishing brush, rubbing it in the polish, then gently wiping it over the areas where there would be sweat stains-- under the pits, around the neck, where my fingers touch the fasteners along the sides. By wiping gently with a large, stiff bristled brush, you get the stain on the high points of your fabric, providing a natural grime look.
With a sandpaper block, I scraped away at the seams, edges, and other areas that experience heavy wear. this dulls the fabric out and frays it slightly, giving that 'years of use' look.
To further years of use, a few drops of black liquid shoe polish simulated oil stains, and I used the same stiff bristle brush trick to add a bit more dark grime over the whole surface.
A light misting of maroon spray paint toned everything down a notch.
Finally, my favorite part, the sunbleached effect. To simulate years of sun beating down on the vest, I mixed a solution of about 1/5 bleach, 4/5 water and used a perfume sprayer to get a very fine mist. I used this over the whole vest, but especially around the shoulders, where the sun would have hit the hardest and longest.
Finally, a very dull knife was dragged over the fabric a bunch of times, not sharp enough to cut but sharp enough to wear the fabric and dent it for battle damage.
The result:
And with the armor plates snapped into place: (The plates look crooked laid out flat, but when the vest is worn, they sit correctly)