I'm longer than I thought.

This project was sort of a personal challenge. I've been making a lot of quick and easy spandex items on my serger this year, and wanted to see if I could make something more complex. A catsuit seemed like a good candidate, and I can use it for costumes, as long underwear, etc.

I own a catsuit in plain black so I started by tracing it to make a pattern. I figured tracing would work because there's a lot of leeway in getting the fit right with a stretchy fabric. The basic suit is 8 pieces: two front, one back, collar, a crotch gusset cut in half for a zipper, and sleeves. You might notice my suit has a couple more pieces, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Since this was sort of a "trial run" of this pattern, I didn't want to spend a lot on fabric. This was the best I could find that didn't have an obnoxious print and was reasonably priced, even though the stripes made it a little more challenging to work with.

[Some of the following pictures might be a bit nsfw.]

So, I cut out my pattern, serged everything together, and added two invisible zippers - one down the front and one in the crotch (yay going to the bathroom without getting fully undressed). I put it on aaaand... it was too short from crotch to shoulder. I didn't account for this fabric being less stretchy lengthwise than the one my original suit is made from.

The solution was to remove the zipper (pain in the butt since it's sewn into such a thin stretchy fabric), and add some fabric. I decided to place the stripe over the chest so it looked intentional.

I'm really happy with the feet on this. The legs of the back section are cut a little longer than the front to allow for a dart on the heel.

All serging all the time.

Here's the crotch gusset. This took some figuring out because I'd never sewn one before and all the tutorials I found didn't have a zipper running through it. It's not lined up perfectly, but no one really sees this part anyways so I didn't bother fixing it.

I'm planning on making another in a fancier fabric now that I have the pattern worked out (I hope).