Teen Titans - Robin's Pants

A lot of my time designing Robin's outfit was spent on trying to figure out ways to hide her curves and create a more believable cross-play. I learned that diagonals do a great job of hiding curves, so I wanted to incorporate them into the pants as well as the jacket.

I started with a basic pair of army green pants from the local thrift shop.

Pretty boring, right?

I wanted to give them a more "cargo-esque" look, so I added three decorative horizontal seams. This served a dual purpose, as I also needed to shorten the pants. I slit the sides of the pants open because I knew I was just going to cover it up with a panel later.

With the sides cut out so I could sew the seams.

Close-up of the top stitching.

For the side panels, I didn't want to do just plain chevrons again, so I started looking for inspiration in Robin's other costumes. Well, the Nightwing logo is kind of like a chevron shape! I'll used that!

A decision I would come to regret.

I created a pattern based on the logo, adjusting it slightly so that when the pieces were layered, the head of the bird was still visible. 

Prototype pattern pieces

Of course, the birds would need to get smaller as the leg tapered...

Final pattern pieces, various sizes.

I cut out all the pieces... (Later I would realize that because of the knee-high boots, I would only need half the pieces I cut out).

I didn't have enough green from the jacket, so I cut half the birds out of black pleather and painted then with emerald green leather paint.

Then, in a fit of insanity, I top-stitched ALL the edges. Of ALL the birds.

Slooooow progress

One bird down!

More birds...

The pleather liked to stick in my machine, and the leather paint only made the stickiness worse. It was a frustrating process, to be sure. Some birds were definitely destroyed in a fit of rage...

Alternating bird colors...

I wanted the panels to be flexible, so I chose to only sew them together on the sides. I used some leftover fabric to make piping to go along the seam where the birds connected to the pants.

Adding piping

I sewed each panel back into the pants, adjusting as I went along to improve the fit of the original pants.

Pants fitting!

I did end up tacking down the birds in a handful of places so they didn't flap around so much, and then I was finally done!