NRAC: Building the Outer Persona – Tracker Vest

Yet again, keeping up a flow of regular postings becomes difficult due to various project delays and bottlenecks, but rest assured, I have not been idle in the hiatus! I have two 3D printed commissions on their way, picked up a new skill that I can use to create ‘primitive’ cultural artifacts, and I spent a large chunk of my Spring Break hard at work on a new vest for my archeologist impression, and I am very pleased with the results.
The decision to include a vest with my New Republic Archeological Corps persona is both stylistic and practical – an extra layer provides extra visual interest, while also allowing for extra small items of gear to be carried on my person. I didn’t want to make yet another Han Solo vest, but luckily my research turned up dual references to a specific model of vest popular with outdoorsy types, which I used to inform my project.

The Ayelixe/Krongbing Textiles Corporation’s Utility Tracker Vest first shows up in Wizards of the Coast’s Arms and Equipment Guide (2002), where it is described as being “constructed of a tough leathery material made from bantha hide”, and is “resistant to tears, stains, and corrosion” (41).
The illustration provided is (unsurprisingly for such a commonplace item) very bare-bones, but shows that such a vest includes at least three front pockets and accommodations for code cylinders, flares, or other such cylindrical devices:
In the most recent Star Wars roleplaying materials made by Fantasy Flight Games, the A/KT TUV is described somewhat differently:

“Common among outdoorsmen, scouts, and hunters, the Tracker Utility Vest from Ayelixe/Krongbing Textiles Corporation is the Explorer’s best friend. These vests are simple sleeveless garments worn on the torso and made from lightweight, durable, stain-resistant, tear- resistant synthetic textiles that close in front with a heavy-duty zipper. They are covered with numerous pouches of various size, shape, and utility, which are all connected to an integral load-bearing system concealed beneath the vest’s lining. When fully zipped, the garment distributes the weight of anything carried in its pouches evenly and effectively across the wearer’s body, allowing the wearer to carry his important tools and items where he can reach them quickly and without them weighing him down overmuch or getting in his way.” (Edge of the Empire – Enter the Unknown, 45).

Since no illustration is provided for this incarnation of the vest, I decided to base my vest on the earlier depiction.

To construct my vest, I first took apart the dark brown cotton jacket (Goodwill, <$4) from my Naboo partisan impression for a pattern. This jacket had good lines, but its pockets were too small to be of much use, and the fabric took forever to dry. When I read that the A/KT UTV was made of a tear-resistant material, I remembered that I had an old M66 Vietnam-era tropical heavy shirt/light jacket (Goodwill, <$6) hanging in my closet, which I hadn’t worn in years. This garment was made of 100% cotton ripstop material, which would be tough but also fire-safe (most modern ripstops are nylon or polyester), and I knew from experience (wearing said jacket while adventuring around South America in the rainy season) that the material dries fairly quickly – perfect for all my needs!
Per the WotC image, I knew that my vest would need at least three pockets, and as I’ve discovered lately, functional pockets are generally a pain in the neck to make from scratch. Always seeking to work more efficiently wherever possible, I opted to use as much of the existing M66 pockets as I could. I wound up having to make new flaps (Velcro closure) and bellows for the bottom pockets, and going with simple un-bellowed top pockets. On the top left pocket I added tubes for holding code cylinders, although in hindsight I should probably have stuck closer to the source image and made three tubes—I only went with two because I had the perfect piece of material, and I only have two code cylinders.

I drafted my pattern from the brown jacket, deconstructed the green jacket, prepped and laid out pieces, and got to work. The nice thing about recreating GFFA items is that machine sewing is perfectly appropriate, so even though the designs may be a little more involved, the amount of time spent winds up being about the same. (The other periods I interpret are 18^th century America, and late Third Age Middle-earth…no sewing machines in sight in either setting!)

When I was finished sewing, I had a solid vest ready to go!
But one thing about it still bothered me: the color. OD green is fairly rare in the Star Wars galaxy—most closely associated on-screen with the Rebel commandos on Endor—and maybe it was because I knew what my vest had started out as, but to me it looked more like something that would be worn by a Colonial Marine (aka Vietnam-in-space) grunt. When depicting the everyday galactic civilian, you can’t go wrong with shades of brown. Again, since I had just replicated my old jacket (with a change of fabric), I decided to keep the same dark, chocolate-bar brown. Since my previous attempt with overdyeing OD with dark brown (my Bergan pack) has continued to fade back towards green, I wanted to try and see if I could lighten the green any before dyeing the brown. As expected, a dunk in RIT Color Remover (aka sodium hydrosulfite and washing soda) did little to lighten the shade of green, so I went ahead and tossed the vest in a dyebath of RIT cocoa brown.
The final results came out looking great, with no hint of green to be seen. I plan on wearing this vest as often as possible this summer, both to sun-fade it, and add layers of sweat and grime – authentically!

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