THANK YOU FastLEDers!
I had my LED Suit (panels) up and running in time for Halloween. I have a short and crappy video that gives you some idea of what the end result was. I will be trying to find a better camera and getting better video and showing all the effects in rotation.
The project is divided into 10 panels of 72 LEDs each, powered by a 3S Lipo battery. The battery has a direct connection to the Arduino battery, and also connects to three buck converters set to 5 volts. The converters can put out between 2 and 3 amps. Most of the effects were set for half brightness and could be turned down even more for night use. You could clearly see my son from at least a block away! I will do an endurance test later to see exactly how long it will run on one battery. It did half an hour with power to spare, so I’m GUESSING close to an hour is possible. More if running it dimmer.
I will post complete build details soon, on a blog or something. Although I’m a newbie, I’ll try and answer any questions anyone might have.
The future calls for finishing up the hardware – including some improvements I’ve thought of… making it easier to put on… adding more effects… adding sound reactive capabilities… programming effects to a specific song played over a wearable bluetooth speaker… etc, etc!
Thanks again to everyone here! This wouldn’t have been possible without your help, and you turned it into an AWESOME first project, even though I started bigger than I should have. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-FLLClW4B8