The Archer - Making a quiver for a costume

I have finally made my son a quiver for his new favourite activity - shooting limes from the tree with his self constructed bow and arrows (AKA dragon hunting). He was quite specific in his request - the quiver needed to belt across the chest diagonally, and he did not want a lid or flap to cover the "arrows" despite our discussion about the need to keep the bow string dry inside the quiver in a nod to historical veracity. This is a cartoon quiver!

I took photos of the construction. The quiver was very simple to make. I used a canning jar lid as the pattern for the base, measured the seam line, and drew a rectangle with the same width as this measurement plus seam allowances for the body of the quiver.

I used a webbing belt with D ring fastener that came with a pair of shorts as the strap. I sewed the bottom part of the belt (ring free end) to the base of the rectangle before sewing up the back seam.

The fabric for the outside is left over faux suede from upholstering dining chair seats. It does not ease at all well, but surprizingly sewed very easily into the cylinder I had made from the rectangle piece described earlier. I clipped the body of the quiver very slightly each 2cm around before stitching.

I lined the quiver with a woven plaid cotton. I left the lining open in the middle of the back body seam before stitching the lining and outside together at the top opening. This is where the bottom strap came in handy, it was very easy to pull the cylinders out to the right side by tugging on the strap.

Finally I stitched in the ditch at the top of the quiver, then sewed on the other half of the belt. The top section of the belt is offset from the bottom to encourage the quiver to stay put in a diagonal direction when worn across the back.


I tried to get a good shot of the quiver, but it was too busy working to stay in one spot for long.