Kyle Rayner Strikes Again

Happy New Year! Before I get to Kyle, I just wanted to say it's coming up one year of this blog.  I already have a lot of fun things in the pipeline for this year- so thanks for looking, hope you enjoy!

Once I began learning about Kyle Rayner, I immediately became enamored with this version of the costume and just needed an excuse to make it.

  Luckily, my pal Ryan gave me such an excuse.

Cool, no?

Ok, from the beginning. After all the designing, planning, pattern-making and material gathering, construction can begin....

Death by a thousand pins? I see some sewing texts are against over-use of pins- but as you can see, that is not the school that I subscribe to. I over-use pins especially when working with stretch fabrics that can easily "escape" the position that you want them in. So, this left half of the front of the jacket is ready for topstitching.

Here is a close-up shot of the first row of topstitching on the right half of the jacket front.

Working with the symbol on the machine. I use a very narrow satin stitch to join the different layers together. I also use this method to stitch the symbol to the jacket. That white stuff under the symbol is tear-away stabilizer. It helps to keep the whole thing from stretching out of shape, and also gives you something to hold onto if the item is very small.

Above is stitching the zipper tape in place. By this step I've already taken the time to permanently stitch the zipper in place. This included a great amount of making certain that the white parts match up, a tricky feat sometimes. So at this point I am stitching the edges of the zipper tape down, so it will stay out of the way later on.

This is the detail of the sleeve, the shape reminiscent of Kyle's "amour". 

Close-up of the finished jacket, and the piping detail on the collar. I heart piping!

Close up of the front of the jacket. As you can see, there are two rows of topstitching.  I do this to add stability to the garment, also for aesthetics. You may also note that the left and right sides match up nicely at the separating zipper.

 Lastly, this is a view of the back.