Dune Stillsuit Hoodie

Spice and the Water of Life are nice but wouldn’t having a stillsuit hoodie to wear be so much better?

You can mod a regular hoodie into a fantastic stillsuit necessary for survival on the desert planet Arrakis or for fending off Harkonnens while riding on the NYC Subway.

Although this is the female version of Fremen design, the hoodie can also be made to be fit for a Duke. Who knows, you may already know how to wear one. Put your hand in the box to find out…

I was in the groove of making some geeky stuff for Caitlin to wear when she goes back to school. https://www.instructables.com/id/Star-Trek-Female-... I thought what else can I make that would be interesting or a challenge.

I had also just made the Dune sandworm koinobori https://www.instructables.com/id/Dune-Shai-Hulud-S... so how about I attempt to make a stillsuit, but in hoodie form? No one has one, right?

Most of the images here have been changed to black and white for better clarity. The original photos all had a sepia yellowish cast from the warm color lights that didn't look good even if adjustments were made.

This project was really experimental to see if I could make a stillsuit hoodie so the end result is a prototype that can be improved upon. I wanted to make it and share with you any tips and tricks or problems I ran into. I think someone making this for cosplay would be interested in building a better build.

I also wanted to take the sewer/sewist approach to this without doing the foam/worbla/toxic glue and paints route that a cosplayer or costume maker would use. A themed hoodie is for those days when you want to participate but cannot go all out with a fully fledged costume. And it's more comfortable to wear.

1. Do plenty of research. The more details you have on hand, the better you can plan and execute your project.

2. Know what your sewing machine is capable of sewing. I also have a serger which is a great addition to the tools in one's sewing arsenal.

3. The stillsuit(Dune - 1984 movie version) is composed of a lot of textures. Figure out how to duplicate or represent the texture/form with sewing.

Use any hoodie for your project. I found this hoodie on clearance but it was a little thin. A "premium" hoodie would be thicker providing more definition for the embossing lines you are sewing in.

Tailor's chalk doesn't work well on the fleecy side of the fabric. The fibers seem to drag off and stick to the waxy tailor's chalk. It takes several passes to put a legible mark on.

I knew I had to do a bit of deconstruction to make sewing easier. The seams on the sleeves from inside of the cuff to the armhole were cut open with a seam ripper tool. I would now be able to sew anywhere along the length of the sleeve. I knew my serger could seal things back up in a jiffy so I wasn't afraid to take it apart. The pockets were partially detached. It would have been better to completely separate the pocket but it was integrated too much with the zipper and bottom cuff seams which makes it more complicated to put back together.

To make a 3 dimensional effect, the hoodie will be embossed with sewn lines. Since we are not doing something like a down-filled winter jacket, there is no filled inner layer or backing layer to puff out the section that is sewn.

The trick is to draw or transfer your lines to the backside of the fabric. Pinch or fold the seam and sew along the line. You don't need to capture much excess fabric for the seam allowance. You end up creating a bunch of ridges on the back but clean valley lines on the front for that embossed look. Keeping things symmetrical is hard to do when the fabric is stretchy and chalked lines are light. The small curves for the indents on the sleeves were hard to do so they ended up like pointy triangle segments.

I chalked up the sculpture lines for the back of the hoodie.

Block in all the major lines by sewing a pinched seam.

I started to see what would work to replicate the tubing runs on the stillsuit.

Each "stripe" was supposed to be three thin tubes so I first thought I could use strips of ribbon to encase something like paracord to give the 3D effect of separate lines. It was a lot of work to encase each line and I didn't have a narrow foot on the sewing machine. Sewing bumpy objects is no fun.

Plan B.

Sew the paracord directly on the panel. I had cut small pieces of paracord to fit. I was too lazy to melt the ends so the fibers all frayed out at the end and shifted randomly as the paracord was sewn. It did not look nice. The cording foot on the sewing machine did not guide the paracord too accurately. It was tough to sew on the partially detached pocket flap. I abandoned this method which you can still see in the pictures. I had used the seam ripper tool on a few seams before so I know the thin sweatshirt material is not sturdy enough to go through deconstructing long sewn zigzag stitched runs already on the material.

Plan C.

I finally tried some thin elastic band to be the tubing stripe. It is nice because it stretches along with the sweatshirt material. The ends didn't really fray when cut but for the long run, would be better if cut with a hot knife to seal the ends. I used a zigzag stitch to go all around the perimeter of the elastic band piece to attach it. The zigzag stitch has some give to it so it can stretch a bit too and not bind or pucker up the material it is sewn to.

A few more tubing stripes could probably have fit in, depending on how detailed you want the stillsuit hoodie to be.

Create a set of custom shaped applique patches to sew on. 3D print ninjaflex on fabric backing.

There is this strappy thing that goes across the shoulders.

I had some black fabric which I serged into a long tube to make the strap and turned it inside out to have the overlocked seam on the inside. Iron the strip to make it flat. The finished width fit inside the 1 1/2" black plastic D rings I had.

I cut a small piece from the strip to form the attachment tabs for the D rings. The serger is great for seaming and closing up the open ends.

The D rings were attached to the hoodie near the top of the zipper.

Drape the strip around the collar and feed the ends through the D rings. The free ends go back out to the side. The ends are sewn/bar tacked to their position on the shoulders.

I had some leftover black rib knit material so I made a wind collar for the hoodie. It also looks like the undersuit on the stillsuit. Take a folded over length of material to make the collar. I serged the ends and turned it inside out. The bottom entire length was then serged to form an enclosed tube for the collar. The collar was then bartacked at a few points to attach the wind collar to the hoodie collar. You could actually sew around the entire collar to attach it but lining up all the seams to look nice is difficult.

Dollar stores or discount liquidator type stores are always fun to browse and you'll never know what you'll find at bargain prices. They are a good source of raw materials on the cheap and you'll end up accumulating tons of stuff that looked cool at the time, may not have had a need for it but tell yourself it will come in handy one day and may never see that item on sale again so you just have to buy it. Plastic Fastex buckles and buckle slides are expensive so it's lucky I found this web sling carrier in the junk box, don't know how long I've had it but it has the all the buckles and straps we need for the hoodie.

Cut apart the web sling in order to reuse the parts.

I attached the two Fastex clip buckles and straps on the shoulders.

I attached the four slide buckles and straps on the back.

I lastly added the nose moisture capture tube to the hoodie. This is black silicone aquarium tubing which is soft and flexible. I haven't made a nose clip for fastening to the nose but I suppose there are a multitude of ways to make something work. I used a bit of the webbing to sew to the tube and then bartacked the web tab to the hoodie. A nylon tie-wrap is used to bind the tubing together at the upper chest and for the ear loop.

And there you have it. So, how many are thinking of rigging this up with a water pump?