Costume Notes: Bombshell Wonder Woman

Completed: March 2014

Debuted: All-Con 2014

Time Completed: I’m not 100% sure on exact hours, but I started it 2 weeks before the con.

Why This Costume: I love Wonder Woman. Love her about as much as I love Rogue. That said, I’ve really been intimidated in the past by her costumes. So many people have done Wonder Woman so well! I swooned over the Bombshell artwork by Ant Lucia last year and ordered the statue of Wondie the second it came out. I absolutely loved the design, so I decided to make it my first full-on Wondie cosplay.

How I made it: This was a pretty simple costume when all put together, but a bit time consuming.

The shirt was the Franken-baby of 3 patterns: Sewaholic’s Alma blouse (base), Gertie’s shirtdress (lapels, collar, and facing), and Colette Macaron (sleeves). I found a beautiful cotton sateen with 3% spandex from Jo-Ann’s of all places. I originally planned to just use Gertie’s shirtdress bodice as the base and lengthen it, but it wasn’t as form-fitting as I wanted. I stuck with the Alma as the base since the double darts on the front and back offered a bit more shaping. To modify, I just cut 2 of the front piece as opposed to cutting on the fold.

I treated the W as an applique. After tracing out the shape, I interfaced it and basted batting to the wrong side to get that mild puff that the statue has. I couldn’t find pre-made gold piping at my local stores, so I made some out of bias tape and cording I already had on hand. Once I stitched the piping into place, I machine stitched the lines of the W and hand stitched the edges to the base top. That took a solid evening of watching Hulu :P.

The zipper was an interesting monster. Even after taking pains to measure and make sure I was even, I still wound up being off by about 1″ between sides of my top. Oops. I used a white separating zipper and basted it in place. I then basted the facings in place over the zipper to check the fit. That took a couple of tries and fiddling, but it worked!

The shorts were much simpler.  They’re Colette’s Iris short pattern in a cotton poplin with 3% spandex. These were a breeze to sew up and only took about 2.5 hours start to finish. My only issue was that I cut off a tiny bit too much length in the shorts, so now they’re super bootylicious 😛 I sewed some cute stars I found on etsy using the button placement on the pattern. I nixed the pockets since I didn’t want to have anything bulging while taking pictures.

The belt buckle is from Haus of Meta. I spray painted it gold and glued it on to some belting from Jo-Ann’s. The glue didn’t hold up very well, so I think I’m going to scrape it off and just go back to my default of using industrial strength velcro. Or just get the belt from Roxanna.

The wig was an interesting challenge. I used a cheap eBay wig that I had on hand and added some wefts from Epic Cosplay. To get a bit of extra volume, I added a Bumpit to the crown of the wig. The yellow headband is made of scrap fabric and is attached to a plastic headband so I didn’t have to worry about it falling off. I actually glued an extra strand of wefts on the bottom to cover up the Bumpit.

The boots were an amazing eBay find 1 week before the con! I had some suede ones on hand, but I wasn’t super happy with them and they have a 3″ heel. These are only 1″, which means my feet are much happier. I’m planning to paint the star and stripe on them for Dallas Comic Con.

My bracelets are a stand-in from Three Muses. One of my friends is making me some that are accurate to the statue out of sheet metal. I haven’t seen the final product yet, but last time I saw them they were gorgeous!

Thoughts on this costume: Wonder Woman! My nerdy heart is happy. I really, really like this design and how it looks on me. It’s also one of my most comfortable costumes! After running around in this for nearly 12 hours, I still felt pretty good.

I’m pretty happy with how this costume turned out. I definitely have some things I need to fix before I wear it to Dallas Comic Con like the boots and the belt. Still, I can’t wait to wear it again! You can see more pics on my Facebook page.