FYI if anyone is interested in how the undersuit was made:
First off, as you all can see, we decided to make it a 2-piece instead of a jumpsuit.
Arturo can tell you all about the short-comings of using a jumpsuit for this costume. I listened to how Arturo wanted to be as far as what it needed to support and how comfortable he wanted it to be and decided right away to go with 2 separate pieces. This works because the entire waist of the undersuit is covered by all of those belts. No one would ever know whether it was one piece or two. He wanted this suit to fit him very well, not too loose and not too tight.
AND a 2-piece is much more comfortable, flexible and able to be much more form-fitting than any jumpsuit could ever be......with out giving the wearer a permanent wedgie.
Arturo brought me about 6 yards of dyed fabric. I asked him to dye it to what ever color he wanted to first, then wash the fabric. That way, if it was going to shrink, it would have already done so before I spent 6 weeks working on this........
Shirt:
I started with Simplicity 7187 men's design-your-own shirt pattern. I used the view "D" collar. I redesigned the sleeves completely to mimic the sleeves in the screen-used costume. Arturo left about 800 reference pictures of every square inch of the costume at my place, so there could be no doubt that it was right.
I made a two-piece sleeve design with an extra wide seam to made the flat-felled seam that is seem on both the front and back of both sets of sleeves.
I had to re-do the sleeves once, because the seam wasn't quite wide enough the first time.
Note: Be sure to add enough seam allowance at those seams. You can't just fake it, you need actual material there for it to look right. Sew and finish/topstitch the front seams first, then do the back. You will have to do this as a tube which is pretty tricky to topstitch a straight seam when you don't have much space to work with.
Note: Pay attention to how the armscye is set into the screen-used piece. It goes completely again sewing logic. Yes, I had to pick out the sleeves twice to get it just right. I added bias tape to the sleeve joins, so the topstitched seam would have enough material behind it to give the correct amount of fabric width.
Note: BY ALL MEANS DO include the back vents as suggested in the shirt pattern. There is a reason they are there. Trust me. I was able to cobble together some of the scraps to add a swath of material straight down the back of the shirt. It allowed Arturo complete movement.
I sewed in the clips Arturo made for the hoses at the back seam of the inner sleeve. We added thumb pulls at the sleeve cuffs so the sleeves would stay in place when Arturo put the gauntlets on.
Before we made all of the changes to the shirt, Arturo could have worn it to work, except maybe it was a little bit too purple back then.......now it's the correct color, but he would have to wear a suit-coat over it if he wanted to wear it to work now.
Pants:
Ah. The lack of commercial men's patterns available at the local fabric store..............
The closest workable pattern I could find was Vogue #1753 men's contemporary suit trousers.
I omitted the pockets and darts in the front, per Arturo's wishes. That part of the costume is very visible and there clearly are no darts in the screen-used costume. I left the darts in the back. There is a reason they are there.
These pants needed no belt loops. So far so good!
I constructed the rest of the zipper-fly front and waist as the pattern specified.
I slightly tapered the legs from just above the knees to a straight end. We left an extra 6 inches of material there before we sized it for the hems.
Before we did the rest of the modifications to the pants, Arturo could have worn those to work as well, but again they were kinda purple. A purple shirt is one thing......purple trousers.............well, maybe Arturo could pull that off!
We had to wait until Arturo had the leg armor pieces done to mark where the openings for the straps needed to go. Then Arturo added a whole lot of snaps for the armor.
I made 8 double welt openings for where the knee and shin armor pieces needed to go. I reinforces these spots with mid-weight fusible interfacing, the kind used for shirt collars and cuffs.
These openings are EXACTLY like what is used on the screen used costume.
After we had all of the armor pieces and belts on and in exactly the right place, we measured for the 1" hems to be in exactly the right place on the shoes. A few more snaps, let out the seat a bit and that's how the suit was made.
