A little cosplay tip!
When making "leather" pieces for costumes, do any of you ever use pleather for both sides of the piece? For things like belts, I often used to sew two pleather pieces together, turn it inside out, and then topstitch it flat. Doing it this way made for a really bulky piece that was difficult to pass through the sewing machine for topstitching, even with the aid of tissue paper underneath. Same goes for any pleather pieces that I thought I could get away with just hemming the edges of a single layer. Pleather is sticky, and it made for some nasty stitch work! There are tricks out there to help pass the fabric under the needle more smoothly, but one thing I started doing instead is that I started treating the underside like lining, and started using cheap fabrics in matching colors instead.
For version 2.0 of my Zidane vest's leather harness, I decided to "cheat" and use broadcloth in a matching color for the side that will not be seen (the harness will be permanently attached to my vest, so only the outer layer will be visible). Doing this not only cuts down on fabric bulk, but with the broadcloth being the side that's down, it makes topstitching significantly easier (and cleaner!). Yeah, you can technically see a little of the broadcloth when you look at the piece straight on from the side, but so long as the color matches the pleather, you can get away with it. ;)
This might not work for everything, but it's an option for things that people will only ever see one side of. I've done this with anything I can get away with. I even did this with the gun holster on my Yukio Okumura costume.
Many of you probably already do things like this, and I'm sure there are many more (and probably better) options out there, but this has worked well for me, so I thought I would throw it out there for other people to consider if they've never thought of doing it this way before. :)
-Pluto Knights
