Mostly Digital Progress…

I have the new fabric printing on the way, with the easier glove templates for the traditional costume and the standalone mask and boots for the Ditko suit for testing and hopeful final inclusion in that version. But I haven’t had a good block of time for sewing more of the traditional costume. I mean, not a good block of time when the rest of the house is awake and would not resent me for running the sewing machine. So I have been focusing on the modified template for the Ditko suit with separate shirt, leggings, etc.

This started out as just slicing up the existing bodysuit pattern, but now that I am a good bit through my second sewing of said bodysuit pattern, I am finding more and more reason to replace entire portions of it with patterns I have used at home.

For example, the shirt. The bodysuit pattern has the back side of the shirt split vertically. And because of the mask being connected at the neck, trying to slice the pattern into separate shirt and mask required having these odd and lonely neck/shoulder side pieces.

But there was just no good reason to deal with all that in a standalone shirt pattern. So I digitally re-created the paper shirt pattern I came up with way back when and adapted the webbing and color pattern to fit.

Also, considering that I have fought with the leggings portion (specifically the crotch/inseam) of the existing template twice now, I will be re-creating the leggings portion in the template using the slightly modified leggings template from Sew So Easy that I have had such success with in the past.

While I’m at it, I am going to use the simpler form of the gloves pattern. Ultimately, the only parts of the original template I will be using will be the mask (modified for separation), and the boots (modified for separation).

There are a couple of other advantages to doing the version with separate pieces. For one: No Zippers! Zippers stress me out. And the separate-pieces costume will be easier to get in and out of. Plus, I can order the fabric printings in smaller chunks. I can spread out the costs, and reorder replacement pieces if needed without having to reorder the whole thing (and redo just those pieces rather than the whole dang thing!).

Next weekend, I’m hoping to have time to finish off everything but the gloves on the traditional costume. The fabric printing with the gloves should come soon after that. Theoretically, I can have the traditional costume done before I leave for Japan. But there is a lot to do for that trip, so we’ll see!