TDK Mesh Tunic Almost Complete

Today was a VERY big day here at the Project Work Bench. I have been struggling with how to handle the tunic on the mesh body suit. Because of my experience with the pants, and knowing that my pattern may not work well with both muslin AND the mesh, I was very worried about this part. I had originally decided to do a tunic using the same pattern as my Superman Returns body suit, seeing as how I had that all debugged and whatnot. But when I started doing it in muslin, things got complicated. Because I'm not expecting the mesh to stretch as much as the milliskin that is used in the SR body suit, I had to expand it. But I'm not very good at that, so the results were not good.

I eventually decided to simplify the design. I took a regular T-Shirt out of my closet that fits me well, cut it up, and pulled a pattern off that. I made some TINY changes to it so that it would fit a little better, and then took the scissors to the mesh.

The first step was to produce the main tunic. This part was very easy, though making the pattern uniform was a bit of at trick. I knew I was onto something good when this came off the serger and fit really well.



I then sewed up a couple of sleeves. Also stunning how well they fit, straight off the serger. I knew I was on a roll.



I then attached the sleeves to the tunic. It proved to be a little difficult, but I managed to get the sleeves pinned in properly, and it serged up really nicely. I actually ended up breaking a needle on my machine on one of the thick seams with this, but I think it may have been because a pin was in the way.



REALLY surprisingly, the tunic fit pretty well. It was not perfect, and definitely needs to be tailored a little bit to fit better, but overall the fit is really great. The sleeves are bang on, and the shoulders are just great. It needs a little tightening up in the lower back, but that's about it.

The next step is to install the zipper. I've never done this before. I read up a little on the internet, then pulled out my regular sewing machine.



I'm actually NOT a fan of this machine, as it is very difficult to work with, and tends to not give me what I need. For attaching zippers, there is a special zipper-foot that you need to put on it.



Surprisingly, the machine actually worked pretty well. There were far more dropped stitches than I would have liked, but this just means I have to sew over each side twice. No big deal.

At the end of the day, here is what it looked like:




Which is just great ,and I'm really happy. As mentioned, I still need to do a little tailoring to get the lower back to work just right, but overall it's really great, and I'm totaly thrilled with the results.

EDIT: I just noticed that in this picture, the zipper looks ALL wonky. It's not. I don't know why it looks that way in this pic. Please disregard :)

I'm going to wait to join the upper and lower half together. I want to have the belt onhand so I can see where it goes. The seam will go behind the belt.

Have a good night!