For the last three days I've had a fellow cosplayer sewing up my body suit. It's really snug but it has to be with the two fabric layers. First we laid out the patterns and cut everything out in the silver spandex. We did this just in case we were over/under or had weird measurements. For the most part we were right on and under the arms we discovered that after the black fabric was added what was once comfortable was no longer comfortable so we had to add a small diamond shaped patch under the elbows to the armpits. Hopefully it won't be that noticeable but when your hands change color it's too tight. My seamstress has been fabulous and I owe her tons for the fantastic work she's done.
The patterns are a standard leotard with raglan sleeves (taken in to be tight sleeves) and then a custom leg pattern from stretchy.org. We chose a this style of leotard because it closely matches the cut of the movie suits. We left lots of extra fabric on the top (silver stuff first) and tucked it in under the leotard and then marked where they intersected. After that was done, trimmed and then fitted to make sure it was accurate we laid out the fabric on the gorgeous fabric by
Masked Rider. Note, the fabric is a directional pattern and stretch so all of the suit patterns need to be oriented top to bottom so the pattern looks right. We're using invisible black zippers at the wrists, ankles, and along the back. We were using a 10% stretch scaling for the patterns which means take all your measurements and multiply by 0.9. I also worked in millimeters since it was far easier than converting the decimal inches back to a fraction.
In this pic the pieces are laid out from top to bottom: Sleeves, back halves of leotard, leg, body front of leotard and then the other leg.
We then basted together the black and silver pieces. The paper is parchment paper and because it too is silicone it sticks well to the fabric. We pinned the two fabric pieces and the paper together so it'd go through the sewing machine. The sewing machine used a "stretch stitch" that was set to a long stitch and low tension.
And Voila, this is the suit leotard top! We added the legs but I don't feel comfortable taking a pic down there. Ya I don't have the muscles to fill it out but that's what armor is for!