I made a newer version of the B v S Wonder Woman costume. It is foam over a corset base. The boots and accessories were made or worbla (still getting the hang of working with this.) My Steve was just a thrown together outfit and some tee shirt leg wraps 😉 it rained so we didn’t do the Wild Rumpus Athens Parade. 
The parade was pretty awesome to walk in this year… it is super fun to go as a recognizable character that the kids love. Many high fives and hugs going around ❤️ 
My one big panel choice had to be Matt Smith. The 11th Doctor. My favorite!
the girls both wanted to be Suicide Squad Harley Quinn. They had a blast doing the big group shoot and got featured on the scifi channel!
I finally finished this Once Upon a Time costume of bandit Snow White. Not as much fun as I had hoped so this one got sold pretty soon after :/.
and another costume I worked for a long time on and just didn’t really enjoy wearing. Katniss from Hunger Games (Catching Fire chariot dress.). It lit up like fire and fit well so I actually ended up wearing it to a Christmas party later that year 🙂 I skipped the bunny hutch this year because I had the kids with me on Thursday, but am looking forward to next year.
Inspired by one of my favorite SNL skits with Christopher Walken and Will Ferrell. “More Cowbell.” My partner in crime was the Reaper, taken from the title of the song “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” We had a blast and folks got the joke!
Girls were the “We Bare Bears” brothers and even managed to do the bear stack!
I will probably end up making a new, more screen accurate version of this once I get the hang of some new materials. This is my first attempt made in the summer of 2015 based on the preview shot of her costume. I have worn it several times now, and love that it is so comfortable (for a corset and heels.)
It is made of faux leather, craft foam and modge podge mostly. The leg armor is one piece attached to knee highs and worn over wedge heels. The corset is steel boned with a separate skirt/belt. The sword is just a plastic one I repainted and weathered attached to a leather strap. My hair is brown, just brown 
and doesn’t take color well, so I have given up on trying to dye it black. I don’t really mind… it is more me as Wonder Woman, which I love 🙂
The above photos were from SC Comicon in Greenville April 2016.
Below is a shot of the costume when I first made it..(on my mannequin and showing the sword.) Since then, the skirt has been shortened a bit, but all else the same.
This is one of my favorite shots, taken by my six year old. It shows my other daughter (11) in a rare picture as my professional corset lacer 🙂 The older one is normally my photographer and does an outstanding job!
I originally made this six or seven years ago…post HERE
With new generations falling in love with Star Wars (and old ones rekindling,) I have made over a dozen of these beautiful recreations in the last year or so!
I have learned a lot, changed a little, and even worn my own personal costume several times. My wedding anniversary happened to fall on the premier of “The Force Awakens”, so of course hubby and I had a night on the town fully dressed 🙂 Some Padme/Obi Wan jokes were made, but , hey, we are in love 🙂
I still use the one basic blended mermaid skirt pattern for and faux leather for both the steel boned corset and the gloves. (Yes, I realize my gloves are too short.)
The main thing I am changing is to conform this to Rebel Legion Standards. At first, I thought this meant it needed to be front zip, but after some research, have learned that the back closure is not an issue and just that the front needed a hidden closure flap. Totally doable. 🙂
We were also this Duo for Halloween 2015:
I am going to try to gather up some customer photos to add to this updated post. And as always, have my ebay and esty searches on alert for vintage beads and black lace for this classic 🙂
Close up picture of the Lace I use:
This is my favorite Leia outfit and have been wanting to make it for years. Unfortunately, I never could find a vintage white snowsuit, so had to start from scratch! Here are a few of my favorite reference photos that I used (as well as the Padawan’s Guide). It is basically a white suit with belt and quilted panels with a cream vest and grey boots. As of now, the costume is not complete because I had to wanted to wear it before the vest was finished! I will update the bottom of the post once the whole thing is complete and I have more photos 🙂
I had made a pattern for a one piece suit when I did the Dune still suit that was about my size, so this is what I started with. It took many alterations once pieced together, but was easy to do since it was for me! It was a vintage pattern from the 80’s merged with the “Elvis style” zip front suit pattern.
The wrist communicator and the ID for the vest were made out of sculpy and hand painted with acrylics. I used reference photos found online for these and just made sure to make my pockets for them fit the areas on my patterns. I glued them onto fabric squares that were smaller than the outlying edges of the pieces, then sewed the fabric onto the correct places on the suit.
The taupe/grey boots were a score on ebay. It was hard to find ones that were leather, with a wedge heel, and in my size, but I got lucky one week. I made simple grey vinyl covers that were open up the front and added velcro strips around to hold them in place.
To make her hairstyle, I just made two long braids behind the ears and wrapped and tucked them around. I had ordered a “braid headband” that did not arrive on time, but my hair was just long enough to look ok without it.
The scuply pieces were finished weeks before these shots, but had to do the suit in just one day! I sort of want to go back and redo a few things.. finish it nicer, but think it will probably have to do. Here are some of the shots
More to come shortly!
Here is a photo of the finished vest… Later this year I will be able to add more pictures of the completed suit.
Little Elsa and Batgirl walk the “Wild Rumpus” downtown Athens
Photo by Blane Marable
I made this from Duck tape! It was so fun to be Batgirl. I will add a tutorial on how I made this soon 🙂
Batgirl and “mean Johnny” from Karate Kid. The bodysuit, belt, gloves and boots arrived on Halloween morning. Luckily, I had the bat emblems, cape, and cowl ready to go!
Mine and their best friends all wanted to be a “Frozen” troop this year, OF COURSE. Here are older Elsa and Anna.
Elsa had a removable glitter painted cape, and my daughter painted the Anna skirt herself!
Olaf. She glued all the cotton balls on her “flurry cloud” by herself!
The Whole troop!
Blane Marable also caught a picture of my friend in my Monet Waterlillies painted dress
Young Anna in her green outfit.
Halloween 2014 was the best one yet. I had so much fun making all of our costumes, walking in the Wild Rumpus parade, getting a night out on the town, and continuing the celebration the next day with our annual Halloween/Football party.
My Rapunzel customer had a special request for the winter of 2013. She was attending Disney on Ice in costume and needed a special jacket or cape to wear. We came up with a gorgeous design, found the perfect matching velveteen/velour, lined it with purple and a special lace trim. It ties at the neck with a velvet ribbon and has a huge hood. It ended up being super thick and warm and a great accessory for the Rapunzel Dress.
Here is the original costume, above ….. and my recreation , below.
I had been wanting to do Rachael for years! ( Like 10 years!). This was finally the year, and I got to wear it for 3 different Halloween events. I am now a pro at the 1940’s style rolls. This was a quick costume, so it is not as fully movie accurate as I will make one day.
I am not going to do a tutorial for this costume, because it was really just a quick remake/ alteration. Here is the basic way I made this:
1. Buy Black Suit
2. Make the rest of the costume
Just Kidding:
1. buy Black Suit. Longer skirt. Make sure when you flip up the collar, it comes close to closing at your neck.
2. open collar out to make a high neckline (press)
3. tailor jacket to be very fitted through the waist and lower arms
4. add two sets of shoulder pads to the jacket
5. redo buttons
6. add black leather/pleather patches. These are supposed to be some kind of reptile skin. I did the collar, the shoulders, the neck, either side of the waist, and one on each arm. The neck diamond needs to be removable. ( I used double sided sticky velcro !!!) To be movie accurate, there should be 3 on each side of the waist, and three on each arm, and only one shoulder..the left.
7. the OWL. I bought a black halloween prop that had green light up eyes, and painted it with acrylics
7. hair and makeup. (THE KICKER)
For the hair, I would search you tube for pompadour roll, 1940’s victory rolls, hair rolls, etc. I actually used a stuffed “roll” under the front roll since my hair is very thin.
THIS page has lots of snapshots of the hair and makeup on set.
THIS thread has some amazing details of the jacket construction and medallions someone did a few years ago. Better than most others found online. I will be using this when I remake this costume.
And finally, I LOVE this artist rendition of Rachael by Paul X Johnson.
This is my next project and I realize I have done an awful job of doing instructions in the past. I have prettied up the blog a little, and will start this one in a detailed and nice looking manner. It will be a post that will be updated, so hopefully I can keep it up.
First steps were to get customer measurements, gather lots of reference photos, and do a basic sketch. I decided to do two pieces; a bodice with attached sleeves and an elastic waist skirt with white slip underneath.
Second step was to order the custom printed fabric from Spoonflower here
There is a lighter colored print for the bodice and a darker one for the center panel of the skirt.
7-24-2013
Since I did not make it to the store to purchase matching materials yesterday, I made a stencil last night. Using some close up photos of the embroidery on the skirt, I did about a 2 foot by 4″ sketch. This embroidery goes up both sides of the front panel, as well as around the whole circumference of the skirt, so there is no way I am going to embroider all of that by hand! I could use an applique lace or spend a year trying to program my embroidery machine to do this, but I decided on painting it with my stencil. I like to use what I have handy often times, so I cut the thick clear plastic covering on a binder off to use as my template. I traced over my paper template onto the clear plastic and cut it out with an exacto knife. I did not need to cut the pieces out of the paper template, but did not realize this until I realized a paper template would not work with the paint.
BecauseISaidSew.blogspot.com has a good image of the embroidery sketch uploaded
7-26-2013
Made it to the store today and found matching the purple in the darker print for the skirt was super hard. Luckily, I had an old formal dress that I had forgotten about and it was the perfect shade. I also picked up my lilac for the sleeves, pink ribbon for the stripes and corset lacing, fabric paint and brushes. I had the whole evening to work (minus dinner and bedtime for kiddo)
First, I drafted a pattern using McCalls 4107. This is a pattern designed to end at the high waist, so I had to extend it down about 3-4″. I just slightly flared the bottoms..more is better because I ended up trimming to what was shown after fitting it on my mannequin. You can also see a few other changes I made. I cut the strap back edge and taped it to the front strap and added some more length ( add more next time!) I also curved the front edge at the top so it will look more like hers (at the red block). You will also see where I did not place the back piece on the fold, rather, I placed a cut there and even added more onto the back edge.
I had some fabric of the dark pink polka dot variety, so I did my first try with this. It only needed minor adjustments on my mannequin, so decided to use it as my liner rather than make a new liner. I left the back seam open for final adjustments unlike the pattern which had a one piece back panel. I made bone casings with my pink ribbon on the RIGHT side of the liner. Just because. I normally do them on the wrong side, but this was just too cute. I order my steel bones from corsetmakingsupplies.com and always have a good variety in stock, so found some to fit leaving at least 5/8″ at each end. You don’t want your bones extending into your seam allowances because then you can’t turn it! After sewing the seams, I had two pieces: front side back right, and front side back left.
I then cut the same pieces from my printed fabric using the adjusted pattern, sewed them together the same. Now, I had four separate pieces. With right sides together, one liner and one outer, 5/8″ SA, I sewed full neck seam down the front edge and around the bottom. Trimmed, clipped, and turned right side out! Repeat for left side. Shown below is the front edge. The piece is still totally open on the back edge, so I reached in with a long bone and placed it at the front edge to keep it from bunching. Just a running stitch on the other side of the bone made a channel to keep it in place.
Once both pieces were done, I pinned it on my mannequin with a few inches open in the front where the laces and panel will go. Here is the photo of how the back overlapped and the straps met. I adjusted and marked where the straps should be attached.
Before I took it off the mannequin to sew the straps, I also pinned the back seam as shown below.
Then I took it back off and sewed the back seam and straps as I had marked them. Finally it is in one piece! I then trimmed the neck/back seam with little white lace and the bottom edge with a dark pink/white layered lace.
That is it for the bodice for today. Tomorrow I add sleeves, grommets and center panel.
I also got a lot done on the skirt today. The liner from my formal was PERFECT. I did not have to alter it at all. I cut it 36″ long, the hem measured 52″ and the waist was around 38-40″, plenty large enough to gather into an elastic waistband. Hopefully you can see in the following photo that I drew lines on the skirt. I marked centers at top and bottom, then marked 5″ out on each side of the top center, then 9″ out from the center of the bottom hem. I cut the exact same shape out of the darker printed material. 10″ X 36′ X 18″ X 36″ plus a small seam allowance for turning under the edges. Then I just laid it on top of the skirt and turned under the edges along the sides and bottom and topstitched right to the skirt! You can see the left side sewed down and the right side laying next to the white line I had drawn. I also decided to stitch down the bottom edge instead of letting it flow free.
That is enough for today, but have another free afternoon tomorrow to work on the stencil, petticoat and more!
7-26-2012
Each portion of the stencil has to dry before I can move the skirt around and do another, so I started with doing one portion. It turned out pretty well for my first try at painting a stenciled pattern onto fabric. Words of advice, tape down the slippery stencil and place cardboard underneath to catch the bleed through. This is light pink, but shows up white in the photo. I will go back after it is done and touch up with lavender.
While that was drying, I made the petticoat and put a lace ruffle around the bottom. I made this about an inch longer than the skirt, so that it will be sure to peek out. I can’t finish the skirt until the paint is dry, so petticoat is on hold for now.
In between portions of the stencil, it is back to the bodice. I had a huge puffy sleeve pattern that I knew would be to big, so I trimmed it down to about 19″ X 11″ and cut my pieces of lavender satin out. I marked lines and attached my pink ribbon stripes. Unfortunately, in the second photo, you can see I put them on the shiny side of the satin, where I wanted to use the back/duller side! No problem, I just turned it over and put new ones over the old stitch lines. 🙂
I am still waiting to find the best sheer pink fabric for the bottom of the arm, so the sleeves are on hold, but I pinned one on, and the new pattern seems to look about right. The bottom part of the arm needs to be attached before sewing the seam, so until I find that, the sleeves are the last thing to do!
I made a simple topstitched rectangle to act as the modesty panel for the front of the bodice, having finished edges even with 1/2″ below/above edges. This one was about 6″ wide and 12.5″ long. Knowing my customer was close to/ my mannequin, this left lots to spare. I sewed it to one side leaving the other side free to lay flat underneath as the top was cinched.
Before attaching the panel, I had to put on the grommets, as the panel needs to be attached not on the front edge but on the other side of the grommets so it does not interfere with the lacing. In other words, it is “behind” the lacing (towards the side seam). I eyeball all eyelets/grommets, but it was appx 1.5″ – 2″ between them.
The stencil paint in light pink on the skirt did not come out as great as I had hoped, and to go back and do another layer would have been hard and messy. I had wanted to do certain points in lavender to tie in the sleeves, but I ended up doing just an artistic touch up in lavender to all the lightly painted areas and I like it more than just an occasional touch of lavender!
I was hoping to do a natural light shot today to show the actual colors of the costume, but it is rain, AGAIN!!!
In leiu of a true color shot, I will give you a field test. My first sample of the paint on the fabric after a rain storm. The fabric is drenched and dark, but the paint is not running. Good to know. Anita’s it is for future fabric painting. I did no ironing, nor steaming and it is holding up perfectly!
The bottom sheer part of the sleeve was last, and it was basically a square sized piece of sheer pink material edged in lace and sewn to the bottom of the sleeve pouf, gathering in the pouf as it went around. Finished. Beautiful!
And another happy customer, above.
Oh…plus, I also got to make Flynn’s leather satchel! 🙂
(The close up on the bottom is PRE bone toggle)
MiaLa costuming blog 