I haven’t drafted anything with quite so many seams in odd places as the Black Widow suit, as you saw in my earlier analysis post there are quite a few. Overall I think it turned out well, and for those that are interested here are some of the details of how I made my suit – and also things I would do differently next time.
The Fabric
So after all that sample ordering and deliberation I ended up not going with any of the ones I listed. Instead I used a stretch denim from Jo Anns.
Now at the time it seemed like a pretty good idea, I had this feeling that the film costume had some weight to it and the denim did have the right sort of matte with a tiny amount of texture. But after wearing a denim catsuit I am convinced a 4 way stretch would have been the right choice, let’s just say the suit made it difficult to touch my toes plus 4-way stretch is more forgiving and the fit could have been even better.
With that lesson in mind, I would likely choose Suplex. It’s the stuff my yoga pants are made of and I know it is comfortable, with some weight and durability. It doesn’t have the actual texture, but I more or less determined without going to some super crazy Hollywood fabric store I probably was not going to truly replicate it.
The Pattern
I created the suit for my pattern by altering two patterns:
A basic bodice block from Ralph Pink (they have a collection of great blocks which work as a wonderful starting points).
A legging pattern from simplicty.
Then I laid out tracing paper over the top of the patterns and traced them. Once I had a very basic pattern outline I more of less just drew in all the extra seams roughly where I thought it looked like they should be. The result was a large collection of small pieces of tracing paper which I labeled with a very amusing naming scheme, (things like “bottom center side” and “center center back back”):
Pieces for the front
Pieces for the back
After that I made a fabric mock up out of some cheap cotton and fitted it. I didn’t end up making another pattern, as most of the adjustments were making it smaller, so i decided just to do that on the final design. Also I will be honest I gave up on adding the extra seams on the sleeves, by that point my brain was fried and it was crunch time.
I re-cut out the pattern in the final fabric and sewed it all together. The final suit somehow ended up with some strange twisting of the seams which I am still not sure how that happened… In terms of sewing the biggest trick was getting the order right so all the seams lined up correctly. My suggestion is sew the short horizontal sections first and then all you will need to do is sew long straight seams.
Finishing
The seam highlighting was difficult, I ended up using black hemming tape. I still think there is still a better way of doing this, both in terms of creating the effect and also in the application (I sewed the front to the back more times than I would like). If I figure out how to use my serger better there may be an overlock stitch of some variety that would look good, or maybe some other sort of ribbon. If I figure it out I will let you know (or comment with your own ideas).
The zipper on the other hand was super easy, just a a black chunky zipper (I think mine was about 22in)
