Costume Notes: Casual Wonder Woman (based on art by Hanie Mohd)

Hours Spent: Approximately 30 hours

Debuted: A-Fest 2015

Why This Costume: I adore Hanie Mohd’s take on several superhero ladies and have at least 5 more of her designs on my cosplay wishlist (my first was fancy pants Ms. Marvel). I’ve wanted to make this Wondie ever since I saw it over a year ago!

How I made it: One of the reasons I love this design is because it’s simple, but still offered me the chance to try out some new things and brush up on old skills.

Purchased pieces:

• Wig: Ayumi in Natural Black
• Contacts: Venus Eye Blue from PinkyParadise
• Tiara and bracers (previous purchase): Three Muses Clothing
• Petticoat purchased at Dragon Con 2 years ago. No idea on the vendor!

The first piece I tackled on this costume was the skirt. My big hold-up was fabric. I’ve been searching for a good potential fabric since late last year, but every fabric I found was basically an American flag print or something more suitable for Elsa. I toyed with the idea of either painting the stars or appliqueing them, but both options were far too time consuming and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it justice with my super shaky hands.

This gave me the opportunity to try Spoonflower for the first time. Callula Cosplay created the file for me, and I just uploaded it to their system and printed it out on satin. Overall, the process was pretty painless and very quick, though a bit more expensive than what I try to spend on fabric, even with the creator’s discount. In hindsight, I do wish that I’d bought a swatch before ordering my final fabric. The blue is just a touch off from the original artwork in person, even though Dana pulled the color directly from the artwork. I also wish that I’d thought to ask Dana to scatter the stars in a circular pattern to flow with the way I cut the fabric.

I knew I wanted a skirt with massive volume and twirl power, so I opted to make 2 full circle skirts for ultimate swishiness. The construction was very simple. It’s 4 half circle panels, and the front panel has inseam pockets. The skirt has an elastic waistband for comfort under the corset and there’s horsehair braid in the hem for a pretty magical girl-esque waves.

I went back and forth on how to tackle the bodice. A boned bodice probably would have been more in line with the style of this art, but I also liked the idea of making a corset as another practice piece for Lulu. I opted to create this corset using the welt seam approach, partly because it’s a very strong technique and partly because I wanted to see if I liked it for Lulu. It’s not much faster than my approach for Belle, but overall I really like how it turned out. And as an added bonus, it’s perfect if/when I decide to tackle classic Wondie!

PRO-TIP: If you do this with plastic boning, add a bit of extra width to your boning channels. They’re thicker than steel bones and make life a lot more difficult of you make them just the width of your presser foot. Ask me how I know. 😛

For the “armor”, I covered some foamie sheets with scrap gold spandex using this tutorial. I used this approach on Supergirl’s belt. The only thing I don’t really like about this is how it looks around the eagle’s head. I may remake it for another con. The foamie/spandex sheets attach with velcro. I hot glued the loop pieces on the back side of the foam and hand stitched the corresponding pieces on the corset. I opted for hand stitching so that I could take them out easily if I want to wear this corset on its own or with a different costume.

To create the shoes, I scoured eBay until I stumbled across some tan character shoes for a stupidly low price ($12 for $90 shoes, score!). Once I had them, I painted the base red and white (leftover Angelus paint from previous projects) to match the art. To create the T-strap, I snagged a scrap bit of faux leather from Dana, painted it white, then glued it to the shoe with Bondo.

Thoughts on this costume: All in all, I really enjoy this costume! It’s quite comfortable to wear and the design is so damn cute. It’s a nice combination of my desires to be an Amazon warrior and magical girl. Eventually I’d like to make a matching bolero for cold weather cons as well as a matching clutch. Next time!

Do you have a favorite comfy costume? Feel free to share below!