So it's been a while since I've been here, about 6 years in fact. Where is here you ask? Designing a new cosplay! The last time I made one was way back in 2019, 6 years ago now when I made a Spider Gwen suit. I fell out of the habit in 2020 for obviously covid related reasons, cons just weren't running so I didn't have the motivation to make them in the same way. It took a few years before conventions started running again here and by that point my habits were changed, even if I did have a desire to make a cosplay, I didn't watch media in the same way to have characters that inspire me. But no longer is that the case, for I, the indecisive, have finally made a decision to make an Invisible Women cosplay from Marvel Rivals. Now I will admit that there was still a lot of indecision on which skin to make, at first I wanted to make the Blood Shield skin, but after researching the colours I need I found it would be quite hard to get the shades of grey. Next thought was the regular base skin but that also got ruled out because I didn't have any more of the right shade of blue left. After looking at the options some more I realised the First Family skin looked pretty do-able, same design as the default skin, but in different colours and I even thought I already had the colours.

The next step is coming up with a rough plan for it, so I grabbed my sketch book and... well... started sketching! The goal here is not to plan it out exactly, but just to get a rough idea as to what the pattern pieces might look like with the different coloured segments. This is what I came up with, and it felt quite do-able. The arm looked to be the hardest part, as you can tell by my note of "Arm detail up top looks quite hard". Actually during writing this I looked at the sketch again and noticed I did this before I picked the skin I was going to do. There's a note on the top right about colours and not having the right ones, this would be from looking at the base skins colours and not the colour swapped First Family that I went with in the end. So I guess technically this post lists things slightly out of order, sorry!

From there, the next step is making a more detailed plan of how this will look on the pattern pieces for a catsuit. Thankfully I've already got a very good catsuit pattern that I can use, so that saves a lot of time and effort (and believe me, it took A LOT of time and effort.) But as a bit of a new method as to how to tackle this challenge, I took my digital pattern and exported all the pieces I would need to an image, which I then imported into Procreate on my iPad to draw on top of. Last time I made a cosplay I had neither the iPad nor this pattern so well refined to work on, so they have been amazing tools to leverage in this process. First off I did a rough pass over everything, trying to figure it all out. None of it I felt was too bad to work out but it took me probably 2-3 hours of work to get it all sorted. The worst part by far was the arm and trying to get good reference pictures to see around it from in game. Eventually my partner suggested I just open a replay of a game and pause it which was a massive help and I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner. There's 3 main categories to this design, you have the base pattern that will get cut up and joined with matching segments of other colours to make up the suit. Then you have appliques, smaller details that will go on top of the base suit as they are not big enough to warrant cutting it out of the full suit and adding those complexities. Finally in this design you also have a belt that will go separately on top of this, due to the shape of this belt I'm not entirely sure if it'll stick in the right place correctly, so I may use some magnets to help with that (ps this is literally a thought I had while writing this).

With the rough pass done figuring it all out, I spent another 30-60 mins just going over it all and making a neater version. This version also split the base, applique and belt sections into separate layers in procreate, so that when I come to make the pattern I don't have to figure out which is which, that's already done for me. Which leads to the next step of the the pattern, which as of writing this I have not started. With this work before hand it should be relatively simple, it will just be recreating what I've already drawn out, and just making sure things line up properly when going between the pattern pieces, as well as planning which sides have the seam allowance as they have to overlap a bit.

This post will be the first in a few about this project, so look forward to reading more about this in the future! With AVCON rapidly approaching in early July, and that's my goal I have to get a move on and sort it out. (ps, I'm posting this much later than I wrote it, so expect the other parts potentially after AVCON)

The final thing I will leave you with, if my blog will allow it properly (guess you'll be able to tell by now if it's there or if I had to edit this) is a time lapse of the process in Procreate, I love that it records it automatically as I just think it's so interesting to see how I tackle these things.

For a long time my fiancée has been wanting a metallic green dress similar to the one I made for myself, which I've been more than happy to do because she's not usually a fan of latex so I'm stoked she's interested in one. While the colour is the same as my one I made a few years back, she wanted a pencil dress similar to another she already had (in traditional fabrics). This project is well overdue, she requested it from me probably multiple years ago but it's just been on the back burner and I've been so bad at getting to it. So today (as of starting to write this) I measured her, made the pattern, cut the material and assembled it, which let me tell you, impresses me that I did it all in one day.

Design

I had drawn up the design just under a month ago as I'd been wanting to make a move on it and written out the expected measurements I'd need. When I did come to measure it today I did find a few missing ones to add to the list but it wasn't anything too majour. Mostly just a few extra things to match up the different parts together. I feel like a pencil dress is a lot simpler than a lot of things I've done, this one has a total of 6 seams for example for the entire garment. I did have a bit of trouble getting my head around making my thoughts into a pattern as usual, but honestly I definitely feel like I'm getting the hang of it. I was able to figure out those puzzles I got up to fairly quickly. In some ways it's nice making something for my partner because I was able to look at her and compare it to the design I was making to see if things seemed right, instead of usually making them for myself where best I have is a mirror and can't see all of me. After all that I ended up with these 2 pieces, simple right? As usual with my patterns, I'll double them over in another bit of software and get them ready for laser cutting. p.s. I'm writing a proper run down of the laser cutter that goes over this in more detail, I imagine this will get posted first though so stay tuned. I also added a little rectangular piece in the laser cutting software to make the collar as it's easy enough to do right before cutting. And so that leaves us up to the next stage of the cutting!

Making

Cutting is simple enough, load the files into the software, line it up with the material and set it going. I don't have the most powerful of lasers so it takes a few minutes for each piece, but that's really not much in the grand scheme of things. Plus once the first piece is cut out I can just get on with cleaning that and starting to assemble everything while more cuts. This particular project is only 3 pieces anyway, front, back and collar so super simple.

I didn't really take many photos of this project while working on it it seems, oh well. Once the pieces are cut I clean up the edges where I need to glue and get rid of the worst of the laser cutter schmoo. Laser cutter schmoo? yeah it leaves this oily residue where it has cut, it's going to be melted latex that just stays kinda gooey and oily, and I've found the best thing to clean it off with is white spirits, though that took a bit of trial and error.

Once they are clean, you put glue where you need it on both pieces and wait for it to mostly dry before putting them together, once together you press it firmly with a seam roller or similar to ensure it's firmly together.

As you might be able to tell by the length of the parts in this post, the design really is the hardest bit for me, but I think I've said that enough over all my posts....

6 seams later and we have an assembled dress, all in all this only took me an hour from cutting to when the assembly was finished. But add another hour or so for the design.

I'm very happy with how this dress came out, I think it will show off my fiancee's figure so well. Now, you might have noticed the future tense there even though I completed this a few weeks back now. Well that leads us into the next section about a V2 that's in the works.

V2

One thing I forgot when planning it was adding a zip to the back, this makes it much easier to get in and that's certainly more of the preference for my fiancee. She did try it on like this but between not being used to putting latex on, and how it's shaped, one of the seams tore below the armpit. I'm not exactly surprised I have to make a V2 of this, but I expected it more to be getting the neck/collar or something like that wrong. She still put it on enough to test these and confirm that it fits well in those areas, so that's good. Realistically, the main change will be the back zip to make it easier to wear, but unfortunately for this I don't have the right size currently. I have found some continuous zip's that are suitable and will order those so I can just cut custom lengths for various projects as needed. So please stay tuned for the post about that one when it's done as well!

All in all I'm very happy with this project, it's reinforced the thought to me that I actually understand how pattern making works these days, well atleast a lot better than I used to. I was able to make the (albeit fairly simple) pattern so quickly and painlessly and turn it into the garment within a day. Things like this make me feel very confident in my craft, which isn't where I had been for a few years. I just really want to create more and more at this point, I am just super encouraged to keep going, and I'm really happy about that.

Back in the Day

To start this story we have to go a long way back in time to far away year of 2023. The success of the green dress from the year before was still fuelling my endeavours (and to be honest still to this day) and I had already decided I was going to make an amazing Opel Marble dress one day. What's an Opel Marble dress? well a dress made from some amazing Opel Marble latex I bought from Yummy Gummy of course. Someday I'll have to show it off here. But back to the story at hand, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out a Princess Cut pattern. Pattern making I find is one of the hardest parts of making these clothes. While I'm slowly getting the hang of it, I've still got a lot to learn and what I do takes time and effort. Oh and don't forget the trial as well, and that's what brings us back to this dress, the intent is two part, one a pattern test to make sure I'm happy with it before using my very fancy material, and two, well I wanted a bit more of a casual latex dress. Because this is one of those stories I'm recalling from the past, I can't tell you my exact thought process of why I picked purple for it. I do very much like this Metallic Purple from Radical Rubber, and I thought I had enough to make a full test from it... ah you noticed I said "Thought" there huh.... yeah... I was wrong but we'll get to that part.

This is the pattern I ended up with and I don't expect any of it to make sense to you, it barely does to me most of the time. I have tried to colour code different sections to make it easier for myself as most of it is various lines to then build into other lines and other lines and so on and so forth. Once you separate out the bits you're after it looks much simpler, like this!

Here we have the 4 pieces of the dress, but you may ask, that doesn't look like all of it, and you're right I don't have the skirt in here because I was lazy and made it in another piece of software which totally didn't come back to bite me in the arse. The torso pieces shown here all get duplicated and flipped as right now it's only half a body's worth. I never found a good way to do that in Seamly2D (the software I'm using for the pattern making) but did find I can easily import the files afterwards into Inkscape and duplicate them over and merge ones that need it. I did try this in Adobe Illustrator for a while when I had access to a license, but that actually shrunk all my pieces by about 30% without me noticing for ages, which meant I couldn't figure out why my pattern tests were going so wrong. Eventually I figured out it was Illustrator, though still don't have any idea as to WHY it did it, so I just swapped back to doing it in Inkscape. So I take the two centre pieces for the front and back of the torso, double them over and merge them together to make a single piece that will be cut out. The side pieces for each don't really get touched here as I can just duplicate and flip them in the laser cutter software shortly.

Oh that was quick, so here in Lightburn (laser cutter software) I duplicated and flipped the other 2 side pieces, and also made a basic circle skirt. I don't think I've actually specified in here yet, but what I'm making is a Skater Dress. A circle skirt is simple to make, work out an inner diameter where it goes around your body, and add what ever length you need onto that to make another circle further out. Cut it up a bit because that's too large to fit in my cutter (or rolls of material) and that's all there is to it!

Chop to it

After I have the design and all the parts are in Lightburn, all I need to do is line them up with the material on the cutter, and tell it to start cutting. The laser cutter has been a massive help for me in these projects as it cuts out (heh pun unintended) so many steps, I really gotta do a post about it one day. First thing I cut out is the 8 pieces of the top because they are smaller and easier to fit around the rough edges from when I last used the roll of material, then I moved on to cutting out the skirt. Now the skirt pieces are biiiig, that's the price you pay for a full circle skirt, but they are totally worth it. They are so big I can only cut out 1 at a time, so I cut the first one, move the latex on the laser cutter and line up the second. While doing this I notice that there's not much left on the roll and I start to hope that there will be enough. Once the second pieces is cut I unroll some more and... oh no.... There is not enough for a 3rd. This was the only roll of the Metallic Purple that I had, so at this point the project went mostly on hiatus until I ordered some more material. But because I order the material from the UK and shipping is expensive, I tend to try and only do a bigger order occasionally, last one I did would have been 2019. I did assemble the top of the dress at the time and try it on, found a few things to tweak in the pattern, after all this is the point of testing it. These changes made it into some other garments I made during the hiatus, such as a swimsuit (wow another thing I need to show off here).

Back to the Future

So here we are back in 2025, the new shipment of material arrived some 6 or so months ago and this project has still been sitting on the back burner waiting for me to get motivated. Funny enough one thing that I've found has been helping my motivation is actually writing this blog! So thank you to all of you who are reading this as it gives me even more enjoyment for my hobbies. During this time the pattern for the top half has had a few refinements, nothing too major, mostly just making the curve over the chest smoother as I had a problem with it poking out too far. But it was enough that I decided I'd re-make the top even though I'd have the old test around here somewhere. As I had a clean start to the material being a new roll, I thought it would be best to cut the 2 big remaining circle pieces first and then move onto the new top half. This also allowed me to start assembling the skirt while the top was cutting. Assembling the skirt is easy, it's 4 pieces all with straight edges to join, that really is about as easy as it gets. While assembling it I was thinking something might be looking a bit off, but it's been a while since I made a circle skirt so I didn't really question it much. Once it was all glued up I did what anyone would do, and went to put it on to see how it is and well.... have a look for yourselves

It's giant... the inner hole is about twice as large as it should be... how did I do this? what happened? Honestly I had an idea in my head pretty quickly as to what I did wrong way back in 2023 when I made the pattern, and when I got a chance to sit down in front of the software again I was able to confirm it. I had mixed up circumference and radius. While I needed the skirt to be a specific circumference to match the piece that it's joining on the torso, when I made the design I didn't then convert that into radius (and you thought this was a waste of time at school) and use that in the design. Obviously I should have done this, and that's what I have now done to correct my mistake but it does mean I'm left with that giant skirt. Which I guess leaves the question of what I'll do with it, well after this project I'm basically out of Metallic Purple again but those skirt pieces can be cut up for smaller items. No specific plans as of yet but I guess it goes on the scraps and oddments piles which let me tell you, really build up over 10 years.

So now while I was cutting the 4 new skirt pieces I did the opposite of before and assembled the top so it would be ready to go. I can never get things to line up perfectly even though they do, it must be a bad habit of managing to stretch it slightly when gluing them together. So after assembling I trimmed the end so it was all an even curve to attach the skirt. All the 4 skirt pieces got assembled with some similar issues and trimming in a couple of places. This then leaves the fiddly task of joining the two together, it's really not that bad, it's just a fiddle as it's basically 2 circles joining together where you can't easily get at all sides. One issue I've had before which I probably mentioned with the green dress is these 2 circles not being the same length and having to stretch one out to match. But this time I did a much better job with my planning and that didn't really have to happen (ok to a very minor degree but it barely counts).

And I guess what comes next is the reveal of my new dress!

The Reveal

I'm actually really happy with how this came out and it definitely has proven to be a valid test for my fancy material. I'm glad I did it on something like this first considering all the trials it went through. Even when putting it on for the first time it just went on so easily, I guess I just got the fit that right for me which is also amazing. The green dress for example used a blouse pattern I found on the internet that wasn't sized for me so not a perfect fit, but this one was fully designed for me.

I write the end of this as I'm sitting in a hotel in Berri the day after I finished it, and wore it for the first time and to be honest, I'm just eagerly awaiting a chance to properly wear it out. Heck the photo above of the final dress hasn't even been taken yet as I want to get a nice one for it. At some point I may still add some little sleeves to it, but as of writing this I'm a bit conflicted if I should or not. I'm someone who's quite self conscious about my broad shoulders so that's part of the reason I'm considering it. Anyway, I should leave this here as I have a pizza I need to go pick up!

So I recently ordered a bunch of Grommets, Snaps and Rivets because I thought they would look good in latex... ok ok we've all seen the pictures, I bought them because I KNEW they look good in latex.

First things first, let's do some tests, both to figure out how each one works and also get some examples of what they look like.

So in order of left to right we have

1. 7mm grommet (or eyelet as I'll keep calling it)
2. 7mm double cap rivet (same cap on both sides)
3. A failed hole with a tear
4. A failed snap (I'll explain shortly)
5. 9mm snap female side
6. 9mm snap male side
7. 9mm snap with cap male (cap is on other side)
8. 9mm snap with cap female side

Along with all these parts you need some tools to assemble them, I have the big green DK-93 Snap Press that you can see in the first photo. You can also get hand held plier like ones, or tools designed to hit with a hammer. I got the press because it was only like $30 from where I ordered everything! In the first photo you can also see the green boxes and a few bags with the various dies needed, to either make holes, or fill them without damaging the pieces.

Eye eye captain

The 7mm eyelet is simple enough, there's 2 parts to it but I still don't feel I'm getting it quite right. First thing you have is a die set that cuts the 6mm hole needed. The eyelet (or apparently the correct term is grommet?) has a rimmed cylinder that goes through the hole you just made with the rim on the hero side (bit that will be seen) and then you have a washer that goes over it on the back. When you push the press down it squishes the tube down over the washer and locks it all together. My biggest issue I'm having with it is that the tube doesn't roll over neatly, and is instead splitting as you can see below.

This isn't the end of the world, despite how it looks the edges aren't really sharp, and I've tried a few methods to see if it helps, one sudden heavy press, a slower more gentle press, a lot of little taps, etc etc. None of which so far have made the clean result I was hoping for. I did have a bit of a look online and I've seen people saying using different brands of eyelets have helped them with this same issue, so maybe it's more about the eyelet it self rather than my technique? I'm not really sure but I will continue experimenting, and even then, these are still fine to use, just have to keep the splitting in mind with how I'm using them.

Failures abound

So the next two on the example piece were failures, both were the 9mm snap's I was trying to do. As you can see the first one just came out and even tore the latex around it when trying to get it out of the tool, the second is just malformed and doesn't work to receive the male side of the snap. It took a bit of time for me to figure out what was wrong, and this would have been faster if I had experience with some of this stuff before. As it turns out, the top die I received looks like it had already been used, how do I know? because there was part of a snap still stuck in there and because this was my first time using these dies I didn't realise it wasn't part of it! Once I cleared that out, it worked with a lot less issues. Though because I was using just plain 0.4mm latex with no reinforcement, getting the popper out of the die was a bit hairy. I found I had some brass pin stock from some knife making parts that fitted in the hole nicely and was able to pry it out gently though. In a proper design with these snaps you would either have thicker latex or reinforce it in a way to make it not stretch so you can safely use these and not have them risk pulling out every time you want to take your jacket off. The last 2 poppers are almost the exact same, except they have aesthetically pleasing caps on them, and also happen to be in Gun Metal colour as that's what the supplier I bought from had in stock.

A Stain on my Reputation

One thing you always have to watch out for when mixing metals with latex is that some metals cause latex to stain. I've tried looking up a list of what metals cause this, but when I did I found that information was sparse and even then it was still mixed with different people disagreeing. I'm planning a future blog post where I purchase a bunch of metal samples and test this properly to make a list, but as you can guess it's not ready yet. Why do you bring this up now I hear you asking, well dear reader, the capped rivets I got in this set stain latex. I made this little white cuff as a proof of concept for some thoughts in my head, it's now existed for about half a week, and guess what I noticed on it this morning, stains. One problem I had found when looking to purchase these parts is so many places don't even state WHAT they are made from, and it seems what I've bought here is not safe. Potentially the materials are mixed in my lot so I'll try the other styles I have on some white scraps as well (white makes it very obvious) and see how it goes. Worst case scenario is I have ones to use for non-latex projects but I still have all the tools ready for some new safer ones in the future. I'm sure part of my limitations with finding safe ones are having fewer options of where to buy from here in Australia compared to other places in the world. The shop I purchased them from had a hefty sale as they are shutting down, so that also encouraged me to go there, but hey, atleast the tools were discounted too. There will definitely be more poppers and rivets in my future crafts, even if there is a slight delay to get some more, so stay tuned for that!

The other week I was sitting at dinner out with some friends and I was wearing a pair of my black latex leggings as part of the outfit. Towards the end of the meal I suddenly realised my leggings had spit. Thankfully between my dress and the split being pretty small it wasn't obvious to anyone, not even myself really. My early assessment proved to be correct, a seam had come undone. The best part about that is it's the easiest kind of hole to fix, doesn't need a patch like a tear would as everything already overlaps. So while I repair it, I thought I'd give a bit of a reflection on these leggings.

A Pattern Emerges

The pattern for these is an old one, infact trace back its lineage and it is the very first pattern I used for any latex way back in 2015, just with a few tweaks over the years. Whether these issues come from the original that I bought, or the modifications I did through the years is kinda hard to tell. While I still have a copy of the original, I'm not planning to make it again anytime soon as my measurements have changed and I want things that I make to fit.

These leggings are just a catsuit, cut off at the waist, simple right? In general this is fine to do, and for legs my current pattern hasn't really varied from what I've done here. It's made from 6 pieces, front and back of each leg, and the same for the torso. My newer patterns have the pieces join in a different shape but realistically that is the same outcome.

The Math Just Doesn't Add Up

The biggest issue on these leggings is, as the title might imply, that things don't add up. Take this seam for example: (Sorry about the cat fluff, you try enjoying latex while owning multiple fluffy cats, it doesn't work well) One side of it is 76.87cm and the other side is 72.70cm, so when you glue it all together one end sticks out 4.17cm (1.6 inches) and just doesn't look right. To account for this bad pattern design a simple solution (that you can see I employed here) is to stretch the short side out a bit as you go along to make up for it being shorter. This means that when not being worn the seam will get this ripple as it's all contracted, but when being worn it's all pretty flat and not really noticeable. While I can't say I've empirically tested it, I also imagine it makes it a weaker joint. The short version is it works, but it's not a great thing to do if you can avoid it.

Avoid it you say?

Yes that is what I said... were you not following along? The easiest way to avoid it is just make sure your seams match up. When planning the pattern a lot of the just straight edge ones will match fairly easily, not much modifications required. The curved ones on the other hand always seem to be more complicated, and that's what is wrong in this example. By tweaking the curves you can smooth out a lot of these, if they are too far off you have to tweak where the curves are from and such, but it's not too bad. (Someday I'll make a post more in depth about my patterns) As you can probably tell from the picture above, I like to make my patterns digitally, this makes it super easy to measure the lengths and just add the ones you need together, then you tweak and repeat until everything is the length they should be.

The long and short of it is just if you're aware that it'll be a problem, you can fix it before it becomes one, which I guess is just kinda how it goes in life hey?