September 10th, 2007
Should I buy one or build one? 
Making your own ghillie suit can be a very rewarding project. It is a very time consuming project and before you begin your project you should really determine if it’s worth your time.
Photos of Ghillie Netting and Jute
After you have read further the step by step process you will see just how time consuming making a ghillie suit is. Making a full ghillie suit can take anywhere from 15 to 40 hours. While you may think that it will be a fun project in the beginning taking 2 hours each night for 8-20 days. You may have second thoughts on day 5 wishing you had just purchased one.
Let’s say that you can build a full suit in 20 hours. You should determine how much your time is worth. If you say merely $5/hour, building the suit is costing yourself $100. However, if you’re having fun doing it or its a project you do with your family, this cost doesn’t matter too much.
The materials of a ghillie suit alone may double your cost. The ghillie suit consists of three main parts. The clothes (jacket, pants, overalls, BDUs), netting and jute thread. Additional parts are dye, dental floss, sewing needles, spray paint, Shoe Goo, etc… Depending on what quality of suit you are constructing, the clothing portion can run you from $20 to $50 alone. The netting, jute and accessories will cost you from $10-$20 depending on how much you put on your suit.
If you add this all up, you’ll see that simply purchasing a ghillie suit may be a better choice than (DIY) doing it yourself. There is definitely some satisfaction on make your own suit. There’s nothing better than sniping someone in paintball, having them ask where you got your suit and you telling them you made it yourself. Their next question is often, how do I make one?
If you decide to purchase a ready-made ghillie suit, the Ultra Light Ghillie Suit is a very good quality and popular suit.
How to make a Ghillie Suit
Technically the ghillie suit is a very simple suit to build. Here are the basic steps. Get jacket and pants, lay and attach netting over them, tie strands of dyed jute to the netting. And you’re done! Of course, there are many many steps inbetween with little details but you get the gist of it.
First you should determine if you want a one piece or two piece suit. There are pros and cons to each one. A one piece suit is easier to get into and has no seam at the waist for potential snagging of your pants while crawling. The main advantage of a two piece suit is that you can just wear the top if that’s all you need. Once you select a suit type and are ready to purchase the clothes, remember to buy one or even two sizes larger than what you normally wear.
For netting, any type of strong net will do. A black volleyball net works well here. Other nets that you can use are fish nets, If you’re using any other color net, remember to dye it darker when you are dying your jute.
To attach the netting to your suit you can simply sew the netting to it. Do not use regular thread because its not strong enough. You can use waxed dental floss as it’s strong and cheap. Some people simply glue the netting onto the suit with Shoe Goo. I’ve found that the Shoe Goo dries very strong and is still slightly flexible. It saves actual labor time over using thread. But you’ll lose real time by waiting for it to dry. Some people do both, they sew the netting on and then Shoe Goo the corners to make sure the dental floss doesn’t come undone.
The netting should be attached to the back of the clothing. Whether or not you attach the netting to the front depends upon why you are making the suit. If you are going to be crawling or laying prone alot, you don’t want the netting and jute on the front of the suit. If you’re going to walking or crouching you would want the front of your suit covered.
The next step is to color the jute thread. The choice of colors is dependent on your environment. A decent color range to start with would be tan, green, black, brown, dark green. You can see a sample of colors on the left.
You can add to these colors based on your environment. The thread can be colored using dye. Determine how much thread you want of each color and cut it in those sections and dunk them into the dye. You can get the clothing dye at any Walmart or Target.
You can also purchase the Ghillie Kit shown on the left which comes with pre-cut and dyed jute along with the netting. These come in 5 lb and 7 lb sizes.
Once you have the jute thread dyed, it’s time to cut it into various lengths and attach them to the netting. Cut the just in strands of 18 to 24 inches and begin tieing them to the netting. It’s better to begin with your suit’s main color, such as tan. Take all the tan jute and tie one strand onto each netting square in the center. Then begin to add on the other colors in a random fashion.
Once you’re done, step back and take a look at your suit. Make any adjustments if you feel the color pattern isn’t random. To give it more color you can get some spray paint of a different color and give some threads a light spray.
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