LoveofCountry
Member
Greetings everybody!
Hoping to build this up as a resource/ inspiration for anybody else looking to get into a Flash costume build.
First off, I was heavy inspired by SMP Designs thread over heeeerre: http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=239865
I wouldn't be NEARLY as happy with my suit if it wasn't for his documentation and hard work.
Secondly, I tend to work in the shadows...this is my first attempt to try and showcase my build process so it's definitely going to be rough and please bear with me.
I started off taking an old army combat shirt and a pair of wind pants and took them in on my sewing machine until I was happy with the fit in reference to Barry's suit. Used a combination of sharpies and pinstripe tape to make the seam lines and for various patterning (which totally sucked, BTdubs so it's nice to leverage or bring in friends that might be stronger at pattern drafting if you haven't done something like this before) until I was happy with what I had on my scrubby clothes. Afterwards, painstakingly cut it all out and I highly recommend first transferring into cheaper material than what you plan the finished product to be in. In my case, 3 $ a yard rayon. I started with the pants and ended up with this:
Now I didn't bother with a waistline so I had to make an educated guess on that, but overall I definitely learned a few things and documented what needed to be taken in to save me some time on the actual product. Initially, I was planning to use these as a lining for the pants...but after wearing the mostly finished pants I emphatically decided against that because of the sheer heat factor.... (I started to feel like a Wampa in Tahiti)
My next hurdle was the back waistband section....which I affectionately refer to as Barry's butt panels. I had a feeling this was going to be a nightmare on my machine (Call me Miss Cleo...) I wanted them to be textured which meant batting, along with spandex as the skeletal layer let's call it and deerskin leather on top. Luckily my roommate had a bunch of faux red leather lying around which was similar thickness so I began a test on that.
after getting enough XP to be happy with it, I went on to the real thing in the same fashion. I made almost all the way through on my machine but I didn't have the foresight to "stub" the batting short of the seamline and 4 layers of leather + batting + spandex was defintely asking a lot of my off the shelf $150 singer machine. I ended up having to stitch the two "cheeks" together using a boot threading machine a buddy of mine had.
Next up was the knees, I made a pattern specific for them using drafting tools and poster board, the tedious part is cutting darts into the leather so that it will fold over but still have enough extra meat to have a finished look after all the top stitching.
The most frustrating part of the suit build far and away was the piping...so I didn't document most of that... largely due to stress-drinking from multiple failures, but my biggest take away is precision. Pre-cut your cord to the exact length you need, and use as heavy duty a fabric as you can for the finished color, over stitch it a little bit and due each extreme angle as one piece (For example, one lightning bold should be atleast 3 pieces of separate cord). I thought it would be easier to do the leg piping as one piece, and used a thicker cord than on the jacket, and it's one of my only regrets of the end result. But hey!! Learning experience...so takeaways are important.
Hoping to build this up as a resource/ inspiration for anybody else looking to get into a Flash costume build.
First off, I was heavy inspired by SMP Designs thread over heeeerre: http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=239865
I wouldn't be NEARLY as happy with my suit if it wasn't for his documentation and hard work.
Secondly, I tend to work in the shadows...this is my first attempt to try and showcase my build process so it's definitely going to be rough and please bear with me.
I started off taking an old army combat shirt and a pair of wind pants and took them in on my sewing machine until I was happy with the fit in reference to Barry's suit. Used a combination of sharpies and pinstripe tape to make the seam lines and for various patterning (which totally sucked, BTdubs so it's nice to leverage or bring in friends that might be stronger at pattern drafting if you haven't done something like this before) until I was happy with what I had on my scrubby clothes. Afterwards, painstakingly cut it all out and I highly recommend first transferring into cheaper material than what you plan the finished product to be in. In my case, 3 $ a yard rayon. I started with the pants and ended up with this:
Now I didn't bother with a waistline so I had to make an educated guess on that, but overall I definitely learned a few things and documented what needed to be taken in to save me some time on the actual product. Initially, I was planning to use these as a lining for the pants...but after wearing the mostly finished pants I emphatically decided against that because of the sheer heat factor.... (I started to feel like a Wampa in Tahiti)
My next hurdle was the back waistband section....which I affectionately refer to as Barry's butt panels. I had a feeling this was going to be a nightmare on my machine (Call me Miss Cleo...) I wanted them to be textured which meant batting, along with spandex as the skeletal layer let's call it and deerskin leather on top. Luckily my roommate had a bunch of faux red leather lying around which was similar thickness so I began a test on that.
after getting enough XP to be happy with it, I went on to the real thing in the same fashion. I made almost all the way through on my machine but I didn't have the foresight to "stub" the batting short of the seamline and 4 layers of leather + batting + spandex was defintely asking a lot of my off the shelf $150 singer machine. I ended up having to stitch the two "cheeks" together using a boot threading machine a buddy of mine had.
Next up was the knees, I made a pattern specific for them using drafting tools and poster board, the tedious part is cutting darts into the leather so that it will fold over but still have enough extra meat to have a finished look after all the top stitching.
The most frustrating part of the suit build far and away was the piping...so I didn't document most of that... largely due to stress-drinking from multiple failures, but my biggest take away is precision. Pre-cut your cord to the exact length you need, and use as heavy duty a fabric as you can for the finished color, over stitch it a little bit and due each extreme angle as one piece (For example, one lightning bold should be atleast 3 pieces of separate cord). I thought it would be easier to do the leg piping as one piece, and used a thicker cord than on the jacket, and it's one of my only regrets of the end result. But hey!! Learning experience...so takeaways are important.