Character: The Joker
Series: Batman
Version: Bunny Suit (original art by: Raspbeary)
Debut: DCC Fan Days
This is a costume I originally started for Dragon Con 2014 but had to pause on because I hit some construction issues and I was buying a house and apparently I can handle the stress of one or the other but not both at the same time. I picked this out because I wanted to challenge myself with constructing a fully boned bunny suit. It was definitely a challenge. When I gave up on this the week before I left for Atlanta 2 years ago I told myself I would pick it back up and finish it ASAP. LOL that didn’t happen. I want to tell you I have really good reasons as to why I kicked this down the line for 2 years but the honest truth is that I was mad at it. I didn’t know how to solve my problems and that made me angry. It wasn’t until I attended one of J. Hart’s panels at Ikkicon at the beginning of the year that I got all of the answers I needed as to why this thing wasn’t working out, but unfortunately to make it right I would have had to go back to square one. I wasn’t into that, so I came up with a way to salvage all of the time I had put into the project, knowing all of the mistakes I had made and how to fix them if I ever found myself wanting to try again.
For the suit itself I wanted to constructed all as one piece, with the strength layer built into the suit. I learned that my mistakes in this were that I did not account for fabric ease on the outer layers. When a garment is 3-4 layers thick outer layers need slightly more seam allowance to fit over the under layers. Shout out to J. Hart’s bodice panel for giving me my a-ha moment. I had been following bunny suit tutorials, but none of them ever talked about this. So how was I able to salvage my suit if I didn’t give myself enough ease? I had made my outer most layer out of a 2 way stretch vinyl. I was able to take my boning layer and turn it into a classic over bust corset that was seperate from the suit layer. I then lined the suit with a 2 way stretch lycra. This meant that now my shell could stretch over my corset, where as originally I was trying to line the suit in a non stretch fabric. Classic bunny suits do not have stretch, which is why they are SO FREAKING HARD to make. Since my corset was now seperate i could lace it up and then fit the shell over it. This is not how I wanted this costume to be made, but it’s also the only way I could save the work without starting completely over. I gained a lot of knowledge from it so I was ok with doing it this way, it was not how I wanted it but it’s wasn’t without plenty of experience.
I patterned the bunny suit out using what I guess you call the saran wrap method. I made a mock up of my strength layer based on a commercial over bust corset pattern. I used canvas and zip ties to draft it, then once I knew the length of bones I needed I was able to order them to put into the mock up for a more accurate fit so I could move on to drafting the suit. I wore my strength layer mock up while my husband wrapped me in saran wrap, then tape, then drew on the seam lines and cut me back out. I then used that to trace and draft a muslin. After 2-3 muslins I was happy with my fit and I began building all of the layers out, and thats when it all fell apart. As I mentioned earlier nothing I read talked about adding ease for outer layers and my suit didn’t fit as a result. This is the point where I stuffed it in a closet for 2 years before coming back and switching to separate pieces.
For the tailcoat I used a commercial pattern starting point and then modified the crap out of it. I drafted the lapel piece and the tails and added them to the bodice. All of with swirly detail was cut with a hot knife, heat n bonded to the lining and then topstitched for security. The bunny ear design was done with the same method.
Photo: The Dallas Morning News