All shapes & sizes

Ok, so time to think more about the whole chest area.. It's going to need a little enhancement, and I need to get an idea for sizes, practicality and so on.

A little thought and I realised that theres plenty of info on how to make this stuff, providing you are starting with the correct figure. Of course, there's not that much help on what to do if you are not.

So I started by plotting out various measurements...

Some of which are a little unusual, as having to create the chest area requires a little more thought if they are not to look like two melons welded to my front.

After some careful thought & referring to 'standard' sizes for these things, I settled on a moderate size ;-).

I also started to think about those shoulders.. just how to make that shape from anything flat..

It doesnt feel easy, and my first approach seems to create one with too much of a ridge at the top..

 

I can get the slope to look ok, but not the top..

Suspecting I might have to introduce a flat top cap, but I really dont like that idea.. might end up looking a bit too much like a soldier from the nutcracker suite then.

Cast without crew

With my experiments in gluing things together looking good.. I orded a bottle of black latex paint from ebay.

This stuff is advertised for hen parties, and for suitable kinky people to literally paint a 2nd skin onto themselves as clothing.. awesome, and much like the fake legs, not for hairy people!

After a quick successful test to see if I could use it as glue, (since its not exactly sticky, unlike Copydex).. I started wondering if I could actually cast details with it.. Thankfully the local supermarket was disposing of some childrens modelling clay which lead to my 1st experiment of making a mold, pouring a layer in, letting it dry, rinse, repeat etc.. looked a bit like this...

Not too bad, tried adding some silver paint too..

The right hand one, looks a bit melted, where the 1st layer didnt entirely set before I unpeeled it from the mould..

(Extra credit if anyone can identify what I used to make the silver raised pattern on the left cast ;-) )

So I can make shiny things to attach, but how do they actually get stuck to the clothing ??

Seems the trick for glueing this stuff to cloth is; mask out the area with duct tape, paint a layer of latex paint, let it dry, repeat until you have a solid rubber pad sticking out. Unmask the area, paint the pad & the back of the thing to stick to it with more latex paint, gently press into place and leave it for a day or five.

But first, you have to make the things to glue on!

From my 1st experiment in making a mould, I knew I'd never get the details right in inverse, at least not without repeatedly leaving fingerprints & dents on the bits that were sposed to be smooth.. so I figured I could create positives of the parts in wood, then make the moulds from the positives.

At this stage, I should say that Dremels are awesome, very very awesome, and also that you should probably wear a dust mask, and ideally not wave the rotating bit quite as close to your hands as I did ;-) especially not when it's fitted with the sanding rotaty thing of wood eating. Somehow, I managed to avoid any injury, and ended up with these..

Not too bad.. if you try this.. the Dremel is great at eating wood.. but not great if you want flat surfaces afterward.. for that, use a sheet of sandpaper on a flat surface, and take all the skin off your knuckles.. it works better that way.

 Back to the bits anyway, with the positives created, I built the moulds using the clay..  then poured latex paint into each, and let it set.. this took about a week for each part.

That's the 4 bits at the base, plus the 2 top bits each side. Since the top two each side were identical, I reused the moulds, added a week, but since I did the single pair of those first, it taught me a few things for the bottom ones, about drying times etc.

Around this point I should probably mention, latex paint is easy to clean up from: tiled floors, tables, walls, windows, window sills, plant pots, plants, and skirting boards.

Do NOT expect it to clean up well from anything fabric, or hair.

Thankfully my attempt to backhand an open bottle of latex paint across the table didn't meet any fabric. It did however meet most of the above =).

Also worth remembering.. do not shake the bottle before pouring to get an even mix.. all you end up doing is making latex bits full of air bubbles that either ruin the finish, or cause large cracks during drying.. As it dries, it shrinks, which is fine if its one bit, if theres a crack, it'll shrink apart leaving something you have to fix.


Was it all worth it? did they come out ok ? I think so.. more or less, I suspect they need a dip coat in bit more paint to hide some of those surface defects..

Well.. thats the front ones.. about a months effort on and off, making the bits, letting stuff dry, peeling spilt latex off walls, etc.

The side ones I thought I'd try something a little simpler with.. craft foam, glued together painted over with latex paint to match the front panels, and use a little cloth for texture..

Well that concludes this part.. next time, I'll look at the guantlets & the shoulders.

I've got a crush on me

My trusty trained assistant delivered my corset today.. she attended a course on corset making a while back, and has proven that she's more than remembered enough to create items of awesomeness.

So we took a basic underbust corset pattern, messed around the the lengths a little here & there, to make it a little more comfortable for my frame, and agreed on materials. In this case, it's built from coutil panels, with lycra on top to give it the same look as the rest of the bat outfit. (Bat-thing requires coordination!)

Didnt need the stretch from the lycra for this part, so the lycra was just glued to the coutil using 3M spray glue, to allow the cutting & sewing to go ahead as if there were only the 1 material to work with. The boning is a mix of spiral boned, flat steel boned, and some plastic boning.. all edged with satin binding tape stuff.. At least I hope I got all that right, since I didn't make this bit, I can't say for certain.

Anyway, it looks awesome, so now I just need to ruin it, and attach my armor panels ;-) (all of which have had a dip coat of paint since last photographed, to minimise brush strokes, wood grain effect ;-) etc. They did all look a bit odd hanging from the airer, but I think they look nicer for it.)

I end up grabbing an old duvet rolling it up, and bagging it in a pile of those "super free never quite sure if its really a charity" bags that helpful people keep putting through my letter box. Then I put the corset over that lot & laced it down as tight as I could get.

My reasoning here is that I need to attach all the panels while the corset is under tension, otherwise they'll just pop right off when it's laced back up.

Not that many interesting photos here of the process, that involved much duct tape, careful painting, drying, painting, drying, and then finally, unmasking, more painting, and then the comedy bit where I had to maintain pressure between the armor & the corset while the painty-glue set. Cue comedy use of a few old pairs of tights.. pretty awesome since they can be made to stretch wide as they passed over the armor, and yet stretched & pulled tight & knotted to provide the pressure. This all had to be repeated 4 times, once for each quarter worth of armor to attach.

A week or so later, here's what I'd ended up with =)

It can't actually sit flat anymore, as the armor panels are holding it to it's curved shape!

And the legs? well, I recut the pattern using something less evil than lilac lycra, the black stuff seems nicer to work with. And I'd made up these panels to attach them...

But once I'd painted them up.. they looked a bit more like this..

Which just didnt have the look I was trying for, the splotchy paint effect wasnt even enough. I could improve it massively if I could dip them, but the parts are so large, I wouldnt have enough paint unless I bought insane amounts..  so I thought I'd change plan, and try using just the same cloth effect Im using for the gauntlets & shoulders..

More duct tape masking, careful painting, and I ended up with this..

Sadly, the paint did bleed out quite substantially under the duct tape this time.. so the edges aren't as neat as I'd like

And the placement of the panels isn't 100% identical, but then given they are mounted on stretch fabric, they'll be moving about a bit anyways.

I definitely prefer this effect to the overshiny panels though.

The waist on the leggings is made deliberately high, and the legs deliberately long, that way the waist should be held up by the corset, and the legs long enough to use as a stirrup type ending to stop the legs drifting too far up/down.


Next up all the other sewy bits I've done, but failed to mention so far!