Re: [gauleyguide] yards of material in a base rig?
gauleyguide wrote:
Must be some special material/pattern, I'd still like to see it?!
Basically whatever you feel strong enough (it's your life afterall

). Cordura is a very good fabric choice for the strenght and abrasion resistance, plus you can find it in pretty much any color you want. Thickness can vary depending on your preferences, 500 or 1000 deniers is very classic for that kind of application.
For the harness webbing, paragear.com can provide you every standard used in skydiving/base. I used another wider webbing (same as the webbing made for car-seatbelt) rated at 25kN and made the harness in one piece only for saving bulk and weight. There are different harness type, it's a matter of preference, i made the "V in the back" shape, just like on the perigee containers. Shape and volume of the container is up to you...
For the sewing, there's no absolute truth but a good guideline is to calculate the stitches to be the same strenght as the webbing. It can vary depending on the application, typically on climbing material where there's a lot of abrasion you overdimensionate them. The best pattern is often bartacking but it can change for easyness of building. The important point is to have enough experience in sewing in general, a minimum of common sense and to systematically make some breaking strenght test of your patterns/materials. A good contrast between the sewing thread and the sewn material is a good choice to allow a quick visual inspection of the stitches during the life of your rig.
Climbing standards are a good starting point to have a rough idea of what works with a sufficent security factor, EN and UIAA norms are full of information!