# Seamstress brief — EUC armor prototype, three garments

Read this first. The three tech packs are the detail; this page is the job.

## What this is

A set of compression garments that carry protective pads, cooling panels and small fans for an electric unicycle rider. You are building the fabric carriers from donor garments. Everything technical arrives finished — you attach it, you do not fabricate it.

## What's in the box

- Donor garments, two of each: compression vest, 3/4 compression tights, arm sleeves. One set to build on, one to cut for patches and practice.
- Bonded laminate panels with plastic rails already on them, labeled by zone (D1–D4 capri, V1–V3 vest, S1–S3 sleeves). These are the "dock panels." Treat the rail side as fragile — no iron, no needle through a rail flange.
- Two mail panels (metal ring mesh) already bound in tape, marked LEFT and RIGHT.
- Waistband parts: 80 mm power elastic, Cordura holster and pocket pieces cut and labeled, a plastic lumbar plate, snaps, grommets, Fidlock parts, fold-over elastic, gripper elastic, spacer mesh pieces, mesh pocket pieces.
- Thread: wooly nylon and textured poly for the knit, Kevlar thread for anything touching a laminate or the mail.
- Three tech packs with the positions and pattern pieces.

## What you are building

1. Capri: attach four dock panels to the tights, build and attach the waistband with holsters, pockets, lumbar sleeve and six snap sockets, add the gripper hem band, attach the mail panels over the hip-to-knee dock panels.
2. Vest: attach three dock panels, bond spacer mesh under two of them, sew the side panels with the intake windows, bond five mesh pockets inside, add the collar sleeve, the hem band with six snap studs and two grommets, and the armhole bands with four Fidlock receivers each.
3. Sleeves: attach three dock panels each, bond the tape channel along the inside seam, build the top cuff with four Fidlock males and the wrist cuff with a small inside pocket.

Fans, pumps, tubes, valves, electronics and pads are installed by me after you hand the garments back. If a tube or wire is already taped into a channel, sew around it, never through it.

## Machines and thread

4-thread serger for every knit seam, coverstitch for hems and bands, a walking-foot straight stitch for the Cordura waistband parts. Stretch thread on the knit. Kevlar thread, 3 mm pitch, for binding the dock panel edges and the mail tape.

## Five rules

1. No seam runs under a dock panel or under the mail. If a donor seam is in the way, the panel moves 10 mm, not the seam.
2. Nothing pierces a laminate except the edge binding. No topstitching across a panel, no darts through one.
3. No velcro anywhere, on anything, ever.
4. Bond before you sew where a seam meets a panel edge (I supply the film and the iron settings: 140 °C, no steam, 15 seconds, firm pressure on a silicone sheet).
5. Attach panels with the knit stretched to its finished size on the board I provide. Relaxed knit under a bonded panel puckers on the body.

## Order

Capri first (it teaches the technique), vest second, sleeves last. Within each garment: dock panels, then structural pieces (waistband / side panels / cuffs), then bands and bindings, then the mail.

## Fit check before you finish

I'll come in once per garment for a fit check with the pads docked, before bands and hems are closed. Pads must sit on the marked bone landmarks with my knees and elbows bent.

## What comes back to me

Three garments, the leftover donor set, all unused hardware, and a note of anything that fought you — that's the list for the next version.

## Scope and pay

Quoted as a set. Budget $300–600 for the three garments. Changes to the packs during the build are mine to pay for, not yours to absorb.