OK, so lots of travel and The rest of the materials for the suit came in while I was traveling, so I was able to jump right back in when I returned.
I started by adding the red to the back panel. The main red I'm using is a medium weight faux leather. For the primary segments, the red material is being backed with headliner foam to both create the dimension needed and provide support for the rubber pieces that will be glued over them.
On the back, the red segment was cut, backed with headliner and the detail lines stitched in. The piece was then lined up to the base and tacked down with Super 77.
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The next step was to add the lining. The lining for this piece was cut from navy blue taffeta and thin strips of velcro were added. It was then sewn down and turned right side out. Note that the upper red section was not sewn at this point. This is because it will be edged with gold in the next step.
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The gold edging was then added to the sides of the red section and the upper 'collar' secion was added. I used brass snaps to both functionally attach the collar at the top and serve as the gold details on the back of the collar. The edge between the blue and red will be covered with a cast rubber piece in the end.
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I then moved on to building out the base for the chest piece. To do this, I took the mock up patterns and cut them out of 2mm craft foam and glued them to headliner foam. The pieces were all cut out and assembled with contact cement.
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The next step was to create the center grey strip that extends into the collar and the upper red segments. The center strip was made of medium weight codura that was detailed and glued to the base. The red segments were created in a similar fashion to the upper back. They were then detailed and tacked to the base with Super77. The front edges were then sewn through all layers to secure the pieces permanently.
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The blue lower section was next. The shell for this section was made using the blue metallic faux leather backed with muslin. This piece was then sprayed with Super77 and smoothed over the foam base.
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The join between the red and blue will be cleaned up and that area as well as the underbust/outer lower edges will be covered with the cast rubber pieces.
At this point, I needed to move on to the shirt and began with the shoulders. The base for the shoulder armor pieces was made out of the red faux leather backed with headliner. These pieces were then attached to red ponte pieces that will form the upper shoulder/raglan portion of the sleeve.
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The outer sleeve stripes were next. The outer sleeves were made of the primary navy blue faux leather. To make the stripes, I cut a strip of the blue based on my pattern and added gold edging to it. This was trimmed to account for the .25" gold stripe and the .5" seam allowance. The entire piece was then mounted to headliner foam. I added the foam to this section of the sleeve as I want to ensure that any area that has a rubber piece glued to it is fully supported.
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Muslin bases were then cut for the outer sleeves, the stripes attached to them and the rest of the outer sleeve pieces finished with navy faux leather.
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The under sleeves were made of the metallic blue accent material with a strip of stretch added to the back for added mobility. For the elbow sections, I simply cut strips of the stretch material and ran lines of pin tucks along them to create the 'ribs'.
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The sleeves were then assembled and the shoulders added. Next, the body of the shirt was assembled in the navy stretch and the sleeves attached. The shirt will be hemmed, a small finishing will be added to the neckline and the temporary zipper will be replaced.
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Here are all of the pieces at this point pinned together on the form.
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Meanwhile, as I've been working on the suit, Jordan has been hard at work on all the cast pieces.
To give an example of how close he was able to get to my original paper templates, here's one of the finished pieces with the paper template up against it.
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I also wanted to highlight the shoulder pieces. These pieces were printed, molded and cast flat. Then, the rubber casts were pulled early and molded over a form to create the curve. When the rubber finished curing, the piece held it's shape. We went with this method to control the thickness of the pieces and simplify the molding/casting process. That would have not been possible had he modeled and printed curved pieces.
There were several pieces that needed to be gold, red, and blue. All of the pieces were cast with gold powder and the red and blue segments were painted for a closest-match to the fabrics. Airbrushing and distressing/weathering smooths out any small inconsistencies at the end.
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