Linking here
Of course, you're welcome to link here. If you want a graphic, I quite
like this one:
Here are versions with grey (7k), white (7k), and transparent (40k) backgrounds.
Links
- Davina has given me a lot of help and encouragement. She's amazing - a veritable polymath. This is her seamstress-bellydancing incarnation.
- Fabricland, despite their quirky website, is the best supplier I've found in the UK - both for (e)mail-order and in person (when I make it down to Bournemouth). They're very friendly and helpful, and I've yet to find anyone cheaper. They aren't paying me to say any of this either: I really mean it!
- The Green Pepper have an excellent racing suit pattern in their adults section: #408.
And in no particular order...
- Pattern School is a most excellent site, with pattern pieces to print out and enlarge. I'm highly envious of their extremely clear presentation, and one day I'll work out how they're doing it.
- Damian Klekawka has directions for making a rear-entry zipped 'skinsuit' pattern with gloves, feet, and a hood.
- Spandexwear make custom-fit catsuits and other lycra-based garments, if you don't fancy doing it yourself.
- Glove.org seeks to be all things gloves. I adapted its leather 'duello' glove for my velour purposes.
- The Renaissance Tailor a very good glove page.
- The Fursuit FAQ has a lot of information about making animal-based costumes, mostly of the American Mascot variety.
- Silver Seams Stuffed toy patterns, Ren-Fayre costumes, and more. Well worth a look.
- Red Dawn's drawstring breeches - I would like to have known about this site, while I was working conventional legs out.
- Lindrix has a page describing conventional leg patterns too.
- A knitted catsuit apparently takes six weeks to make. I'm not clear whether it's sewn along the sides, but they'd have to make it by hand if not... which alarms me. :)
- Jumpsuit Guy really likes jumpsuits.
- Dance Links has lots of links for dance-related sites, including dance costumes.
- The Costumer's Manifesto has many links relating to costumes and costuming.
- The Rubberists have linked here too. They have lots of useful stuff about making, wearing, and buying latex clothing. Their site piqued my interest; I've ordered 15m of black sheet rubber from FourD Rubber to play with.
- Suya-Zentai went down around 25th Jan 2006 or so, but is coming back. It was a nice non-sexual site about Zentai whose authors sold good-looking suits through eBay auctions. Lucky for them, they live in China, where it seems you can buy fantastic fabrics for not very much at all.
- Zentai Forum is another zentai forum, and with the apparent demise of Suya-Zentai, the only one.
- You may find Comic Costumes useful or interesting if you're looking for superhero or other comics-related ideas.
Rings
- None yet.
Books
| Pattern Making for Fashion Design | Helen Joseph-Armstrong | A book about drafting patterns. Mostly women's wear. Starts from more conventional measurements than my 'lots of circumferences' system, so things are likely to fit better where the body is asymmetric. There's plenty on basic pattern design, and 70 pages on stretch fabrics (sportswear and swimwear). I have the third edition, but I'm told the second edition had more about stretch. |
| Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing | A general book on sewing. Not much specific detail on stretch fabrics, but covers various techniques, some of which you may find useful to adapt for your garments - use of hook-and-eye closures, laces, etc. Also covers home furnishing techniques, and haven't you always wanted a lycra pillow and pillow case? | |
| Kwik-Sew's Swim & Action Wear | Kerstin Martensson | Basically a lot of swimsuit patterns with instructions and suggestions, but done up like a book. Pretty good for someone wanting to make women's swimsuits, quite useful for me to see how such things go together. I like the lady in the white outfit with the orange stripe down her sides, but I honestly didn't buy it just for the pictures. :) |
| Designing Patterns (a fresh approach to pattern cutting) | Hilary Campbell | Seems like a pretty good basic book, with plenty of diagrams. Several collar styles, the sleeve styles, etc. It has some geometry describing a basic garment block based on measurements, but I'm suspicious of it: the first instruction tells you to base it on an `averaged measure', which just seems downright hokey. I keep meaning to write to the author and ask about it. This book helped me understand how set-in sleeves curves work. |
| Pattern Designing for Swimwear | Stuart and Bernadette Anderson | A superb website. Very clear, very informative, and something I'll look at carefully once I'm fed up making mistakes. (Currently, my mistakes are quite entertaining to me.) I particularly like the 'Helen' swimsuit made from gold lycra. Mr Anderson is a lucky lucky man. Sadly, the swimsuit patterns section that's so very useful is down, but there's a contact address for Mr Anderson at the site which is there now. He may be willing to make the pages available on polite request. |