All the parts that make a whole..

 There's been quite a lot of activity that hasnt made it to this blog.. I've made up an undershirt that will form the basic top part of the costume..

Raglan sleeves were a challenge.. but hardest of all was attaching the neck. Originally I wasnt going to put one on, but after seeing how the undershirt turned out, I decided it needed that polo neck to complete it.

The sleeves are made with some 1 way stretch dotty hole fabric (wicking fabric?) the same stuff Im using to texture the gauntlets/legs/shoulders with.

However here I'm using it in its normal form, which proved a bit more of a challenge than I planned, when I made up the 1st arm with the stretch in the wrong direction.. if you know any people with one very long arm thats very thin.. I have just the sleeve for them.

If you are like most normal people, then keep the stretch going around the arm, not along it ;-)

Back of top.

Front of top

The final result isnt too bad, even if I did have to cheat a little & top seam the neck on.

At this point I begin to hate blogger for rotating some of my photos.. yes I could likely fix this, but for now, I'll ignore them.. got too much to do to worry about rotating things here.


Over the undershirt, goes the corset, that you've already seen, and the Bat-Bra.  The essential Bat-Mammary containment unit, intended to offer support, and protection from all those evil villians out there.

I started attempting to clone a bullet-bra, but rapidly realised that having that many straight seams all meeting at a point was well beyond my sewing. So I hit on the idea of cladding an existing bra with the black lycra to make it match the rest of the costume, another score for discount culture, a cheap black sports bra made an awesome start, I carefully copied each panel onto paper, added seam allowance, recut it from lycra, then joined it all together & joined it to the bra.

But the Bat-Bra was not yet complete, for Bat-Thing demands a strong recognisable brand, to enable merchandising, and lucrative productisation of important bat accessories, such as Bat-Lipstick, Bat-Styling Tongs, and Bat-GasBBQs.

So this is the rough space I have available, although strongly tempted to go for a big stylised 'S', (say in red & yellow).. I figure some sort of bat may be more appropriate.

A quick sketch later, and I'm headed for this variant, which fits pretty well into the shape.

So I carefully cut the shape out of some black lycra, back the whole piece with some baby pink vinyl (the same as used for the gauntlets)

And carefully, with alignment marks, sew the entire thing into the v-shape of the Bat-Bra.

 And here's the finished item.. it does of course look a lot more shapely when filled out =)

The bat really is pink, although the light in the photo makes it look a bit nuclear white.

Lastly there was the skirt, planned originally to be a sort of pleaty gathery thing with scalloped bat-like edges (see "Starting Out"). Since then I've gained this pink highlight color, and have decided it would be a good idea to integrate that into the skirt.

I figured on a couple of front pink pleats, and maybe a belt, (Bat-Thing has to have a belt, to store all those Bat-Cosmetics). My first guess is it should look a little like this.

 Once again, discount economy comes to the rescue, the end of summer sale of sale items now reduced to sale item on sale during the last chance everything must go sale of sales, delivered me a somewhat plain, size 20 black office skirt.

I'm not size 20, and the office skirt was sorta just above the knee, which might be awesome for the office, but is not awesome if you are Bat-Thing, and need freedom to do high kicks, and choke villains to unconciousness between your powerful legs.

I hacked off the lower 6 inches or so, cut open the front seams, added the pleats, took the front seams in by an inch or two each side, rejoined the waistline using some elastic across the split, took the left over fabric & crafted 6 belt loops & attached those & found me a luggage strap to use as a belt.  Bat-Thing is happy.

Finally, Bat-Thing needed a way to ensure that should she end up accidentally leaving the odd villian or two attached to railroad tracks, that there wouldn't be any incriminating evidence pointing back to the Bat.

We're talking gloves, which turned out to be remarkably simple to make. Draw around hand, fold at the index finger, sew, cut hole for thumb & attach thumb bit. All easy.. except the thumb bit.. had to do that by hand.. nasty nasty.

I probably dont have a future making custom opera gloves ;-)

Unless you like attending the opera looking like a raggedy-anne doll, or you are Bat-Thing, and the opera is merely something you are attending to catch the evil bad guy.

Next time.. the cape.