Cotton Tape
Cotton Tape:
So what is cotton tape? Essentially it’s just varying length and widths of cotton uses for edging in clothing. However due to the colours and how cheap it is, it’s a very effective material for crafting.
At the bottom of the post, I’ve added some links for the colours and sizes of cotton that I personally use in my crafting. My most recent suits, only use this material, with no fake vegetation added, just cotton, elasticated loops for natural veg, Raffia and a bit of HaloScreen.
Cotton tape is simply just another basic tool to add to your crafting process, to be used alongside with the various other methods out there. The benefits of this one is how cheap it is in terms of actual money, but also the little time required to do it, with no need to die or treat the materials.
How to use Cotton Tape?
Cotton Tape is extremely easy to use and requires very little preparation to get started, depending how much time and effort you are willing to put in.
My personal method for working with cotton tape is to pre cut everything into varying lengths, usually 2-4 inches, then grab it all and ruffle it up, depending on the brand and style of cotton tape you’ve gone for, some of them come stiffer than others and can do with a bit of scrunching up.
Once you have everything softened up a bit (you can just wash them in hot water), then you can begin to make the shapes that you’ll attaching to the suit, depending on your suit, environment you’re playing in etc.
A normal pair of scissors can be used to cut angles/shapes or you can invest in a pair of Pinking Shears to give a nice zig zag pattern,
Examples of the cut pieces and shapes:
You can attach the cotton tape directly to your suit via small cable ties, especially if your suit is mesh/netting based, small 2.5mm Brown/Green cable ties work well and are what I use in my crafting, the colours are suitable and they are small enough to be discreet but strong.
How much of each colour Cotton Tape you use and where to put it is entirely up to you, due to all the different terrains and base suits you can use. A good way to start, is to pick your primary colour, for the UK woodland environment, I like to start with the darker browns and then add roughly 20-30 pieces of tape to each section of the suit, legs, arms, torso, back, then I drop the amount down the light colour I go, so next might be 15/20 pieces of a lighter brown, then 10 pieces of the greens.
I find tackling each area one at a time helps to see the progress of the suit, rather than trying to do it all at once, once you’ve done an arm it’s good to be able to see the difference it’s made.
The main purpose of adding materials in this way is to add colour and depth to the suit, both of which help break up the shape and create a soft of optical illusion. The colours of the cotton tape I’ve linked below all work well and do a great job of the above.
How it looks
The whole process is really down to personal preference, but to give some inspiration I’ve attached a few pictures of my suits below:
Sample Piece:
FSB Leishy Suit (bear in mind this is just in my garden):
North Mountain Suit (bear in mind this is just in my garden):
Marpat Hood:
Links:
Green Cotton Olive – https://amzn.to/2jGgYHt
Lighter Brown – https://amzn.to/2l5PvzA
Lighter Green – https://amzn.to/2XNd4KS
Mid Brown – https://amzn.to/32mCX7W
Biege – https://amzn.to/32p8O85
Cable Ties – Green / Brown
Pinking SHears – https://amzn.to/2tFyNLT
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