I originally made this six or seven years ago…post HERE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:
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.
So, I fell in love with this character after randomly coming across this drawing. I am not a huge “vampire story” fan (never read nor saw Twilight.) I don’t think I have ever read ANY vampire story, actually! This ^^ inspired me to pick up both a manga and novel of Trinity Blood. I ended up liking a LOT of the characters and their amazing wardrobes 🙂 Having never done any sort of vampire or armor of anything besides leather, my long term project was chosen!
First, came my favorite part…sketching!
Then, since I knew the fabric part would be easier for me, I started some simple and cheap armor. No worbla for me yet…investing that much money in an experiment was too scary! I just used a tee shirt and duck tape on my mannequin for the breast plate. I also had mod-podge handy, so did many coats of that over the tape to even out the ridges and ugly lines. It was not fun and only did a coat or so a week. This is why this costume ended up being so drawn out!!! UGH.
Then, months later, I had more time and a renewed interest in the costume. I left the “armor” alone and started patterning the eyelet underdress and velvet jacket. This was much easier for me and much more fun.
Jacket and over corset pattern
Simple “eyeballed” underdress from a basic corset pattern, strapless with a zip back
Once I got rolling on the jacket and gathered up ALL of my spare gold braided trim, I didn’t stop to take many photos!
Above is the back of the jacket and under bust corset.
This shows the underdress and starting work on the design at the bottom of the jacket. I was going to hand embroider the whole panel, but switched to trim and paint since I wanted to actually complete this thing!
I WAS able to do some embroidery on the sleeves:)
This is gold metallic leather, and is the upper portion of the puff sleeve.
While I was working on the arm bands, I got inspired to finish up the armor. Here are the two shoulder pieces and the front pieces with the leather arm bands. I tried some foam for the shoulders and torso parts of the armor and they worked out to be sturdy enough once doubled up and duck taped! I used puffy paint to make the designs mostly! The torso pieces are only attached at the top edges, so the armor bends with motion. I used a lightweight chain and studs to attach the front armor to the shoulder pieces and then to the back to meet at the center point of the corset where they attach with a clip! I finished it all up with a little silver paint over the bronze and her gems.
Lastly, I painted the decorations down the sides of a pair of red tights, gathered some of the eyelet for a neck ruffle, added some lace and buttons to some thigh high flat white boots, made a red sash/little wallet and made the hat. I don’t have a picture of the hat in progress because I was trying to finish it quickly in time for DragonCon…I used a vintage cap, and pieces of plastic mesh covered in my blue velvet to construct a simpler/smaller version of her huge one. My daughter dyed a strip of the white wig red for the signature stripe and we are done!! The last minute things really added up, haha!!
Hat, wig, and ruffle.
Armor on without the final armor touches
At the convention, very happy after 10 hours in FLAT boots and no armor! ….Next time 🙂
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 was such a fun project, and one I even let the kids help with!
I started with a $9.95 vintage late 70s/early 80s polyester wedding dress.
Then, like with my starry starry night costume, I used whatever paint I had available to create a copy of Monet’s painting “Waterlillies”. The one thing I did with this dress was purchase a spray paint fabric paint for the background color. Since it was a polyester sheer material, it just made dots everywhere, so I had to blend that all in. The portion with the bridge from the painting was featured on the back train. It was a blast to wear this last Halloween and will be hard to top!
Satin lined bomber style jacket with black accents and rocking scorpion applique. This is a size Medium and is available for sale, just message me to inquire!
Here is the original:
Glorious Bustle Dress in a size way to tiny for anyone these days to wear. There are intricate moon and star buttons up the front, lace trim and a dagger point skirt. The top is fully boned and structured with princess seaming, articulated sleeves, and tail in the back.
MiaLa costuming blog 