the nightcrawler - part three

Judging by the large size of my patterns and the nature of the 4-way stretch fabric I was using, I had to cut my fabric on a massive, flat surface. I usually cut all my fabric on a cutting mat, but knit fabrics must be laid out perfectly flat for cutting, otherwise you will have many, many problems with your sewing later.

Since my apartment has carpeting, I hauled my materials to my friend's apartment and took up half their living room floor. 

Always cut the big pieces first--I cut my 2 folded pieces first. I pinned the shit out of this fabric to avoid shifting while cutting. You can also use fabric weights to minimize breaking the knit stitches.


Laying the pieces out...

I bought 7-1/2 yards of piping. I used all of it while sewing. Yes, a little over 21 feet of piping.


For attaching the piping to the spandex, I used a zig-zag stitch and a zipper foot on my regular sewing machine. To sew the spandex to another spandex piece I used a very tight tension on my overlock machine. Make sure you have test scraps of fabric whenever you sew on your overlock machine to make sure you get the right tension, otherwise your seam will show on the reverse side when stretched.

I think sewing the piping to the spandex was worse than sewing silk bias binding on silk. IT TOOK ME FOREVER.

I sewed half the costume and did a test fit on my boyfriend. It fit to my expectations, so I will be uploading a preview shot this week hopefully! Next I have to make the gloves and feet... gloves. (feet gloves? Is there such a thing? They're not really socks I suppose...)

the nightcrawler - part two

To make my life easier while drafting the pattern for this costume, my bf left me borrow his wetsuit. Obviously neoprene and swimwear spandex have different stretch properties so I had to reduce some of the measurements based on the wetsuit, as well as take some other measurements to ensure the bodysuit would fit properly.

I will blog about the gloves in another post--here I'll first talk about the pattern for the bodysuit. I draft my patterns on pattern paper, which I buy on a roll for $11 at the fabric store in downtown LA. You can buy it at 45" width or 60". I usually buy 45" because I have little need for 60"... until now. My bf is super tall so I had to tape more paper to the width of the roll.

I did some research online and in my personal sewing books to figure out how to properly draft a bodysuit. I decided for this style that we'd use a center back zipper so I bought a 22" regular nylon zipper. I always think about the closures before starting any pattern because how you get in and out of a costume is.. pretty damn important. So based on this costume using a zipper at the center back, I would have to draft 3 patterns total-- front piece, back piece and sleeve.

For the back piece, I drew a long line for the total length of the bodysuit from the top edge of the neck to the ankle. This was my fold line to help with the fabric cutting. I took measurements for the neck width, neck trim height and the highest point of shoulder, or where the neck goes into the shoulder above the collarbone. The other measurements I used I just based them off the wetsuit. I could have reduced each of the measurements by at least 1/4"-1/2" because swimwear spandex has more stretch than neoprene, but I wasn't really sure how the suit was going to fit so I wanted to be able to "trim" and resew, rather than make it way too small and keep wasting material.





The thin red lines are all the straight measurements (halved, of course), the thick blue lines are for the red panel at the back. You can also see that I made little notches at the knees, ankles, chest, waist; these are for marking the fabric when I cut and sew--to ensure I match everything up perfectly.





I added 1" to my CB fold line for the zipper. I added 1" from top to bottom since I will be cutting this pattern on the fold of the fabric, but slashing the fabric along the seam for the zipper.



 
Crotch space is quite important. I took this off the wetsuit, you pervs.
Here's the front piece with the chevron details (not cut yet). I traced the back pattern, pretty much.

Next is the sleeve. As you can notice on the wetsuit, these are raglan sleeves. I am not using raglan sleeves. I am making a regular set-in sleeve (due to the design of the suit), so I had to kind of wing it. I used painters tape to mark off where my armhole was, and laid my cut out pattern on top and traced the armhole.



I took the measurements of the entire "armhole" and drafted a knitted sleeve pattern from the armhole measurements. I remember that the wetsuit's sleeves were not snug when my bf put them on so I took bicep, elbow and wrist measurements of my own.

This pattern might not look like much but it did take me 3 full hours to draft which is pretty long considering there are only 3 pieces to this pattern--there are tons of measurements on this thing! Hopefully when I sew it together I will have few problems...

the nightcrawler - part one

It's that time of the year again--plotting for Halloween. Based on my past experiences with working on costumes that appear to be easy but end up being absurdly time-consuming, I decided to start very early this year.

I don't usually sew bodysuits but I mean... c'mon, it's just not the same if you're a superhero and you're not wearing a bodysuit or your underwear on the outside, and my bf wasn't down with the idea of wearing anything suggesting underwear on the outside so we went w/ the below depiction of Nightcrawler.



We were very lucky to be able to find the exact type of spandex we wanted, in the exact colors we wanted, in one store. The spandex we chose was a slightly matte swimwear spandex.


For the piping trim I couldn't find the exact shade of yellow, so I bought a white piece of piping (content is unknown) to dye and see if this trim will absorb the color. If not I'll have to make the piping by hand T_T

I will be doing all the sewing in this project (hellooooo overlock machine~) and other than the bodysuit itself the only other thing we have to make is the tail. I'm not making that :D




I need to finish this project before October so I can start my own costume....