Arkham Knight Harley Quinn Costume
I'm starting fresh with my costume blog. It's been a few years and I'm not the best at keeping up with this, but I'm giving it a try again. While I do have a few projects that I am just starting on for 2019, I thought I would post about costumes I made in the last few years. I hope that other will find this information helpful.
First costume up is Harley Quinn from the video game Arkham Knight. This costume was made to be part of an Arkham group for C2E2 and Dragon Con in 2018.
I tend to build costumes from the inside out, so the leggings were the first item I made. I used a leggings pattern I already owned, and had used in previous costumes - Kwik Sew 3463. Leggings are fairly quick and easy to make. I didn't want the shine of spandex fabric, so I used stretch knit that I found locally at JoAnns. The upper diamond design is made from heat transfer vinyl that was cut with a Cricut cutting machine and applied to the fabric. The lower diamond design is made from hot fix studs I found on Amazon. I had a very hard time getting the hot fix studs to actually fuse to the fabric and have glued a the ones that fell off back on with e600. If I were to do this again I would probably find studs with prongs to use instead.
Next came the skirt. After combing through reference images, I decided on making a three tiered skirt with an organza crinoline underneath. For the crinoline underskirt I used silk organza that I already had in my stash and used the same pattern I used for my Captain America USO dancer, but added additional layers of ruffles as I wanted it to poof out a bit more. Instead of the red trim on the bottom, I used some lace I found in the trims at my local Walmart. I did have to visit multiple stores to acquire the number of spools I needed.
The skirt is about somewhere between a 1/2 and 3/4 circle skirt. I started with a full circle and took it in at the side seams until it fit nicely over the crinoline layer. I used black satin from my stash to make the base layer that the ruffles attach to. I wanted a semi crisp look to the ruffles and made them from black cotton cut into strips, narrow hemmed and gathered. I made use of a few specialty feet for my sewing machine to make this process go a bit faster.
To make the narrow hem, I used a narrow hem foot. While starting out this foot is a bit hard to use, the straight line hemming I was doing turned out to be easy once it was started. I still have not mastered using this foot on a curved hem. This foot was part of a set of vintage feet made by Greist I had gotten from my grandmother. I have been able to use the feet with no trouble on my modern machine.
I also made use of my ruffler foot to make all the ruffles. Again, there is a bit of a learning curve to this foot as well, but it saves time and my hands when making so many gathers.
First costume up is Harley Quinn from the video game Arkham Knight. This costume was made to be part of an Arkham group for C2E2 and Dragon Con in 2018.
I tend to build costumes from the inside out, so the leggings were the first item I made. I used a leggings pattern I already owned, and had used in previous costumes - Kwik Sew 3463. Leggings are fairly quick and easy to make. I didn't want the shine of spandex fabric, so I used stretch knit that I found locally at JoAnns. The upper diamond design is made from heat transfer vinyl that was cut with a Cricut cutting machine and applied to the fabric. The lower diamond design is made from hot fix studs I found on Amazon. I had a very hard time getting the hot fix studs to actually fuse to the fabric and have glued a the ones that fell off back on with e600. If I were to do this again I would probably find studs with prongs to use instead.
Next came the skirt. After combing through reference images, I decided on making a three tiered skirt with an organza crinoline underneath. For the crinoline underskirt I used silk organza that I already had in my stash and used the same pattern I used for my Captain America USO dancer, but added additional layers of ruffles as I wanted it to poof out a bit more. Instead of the red trim on the bottom, I used some lace I found in the trims at my local Walmart. I did have to visit multiple stores to acquire the number of spools I needed.
The skirt is about somewhere between a 1/2 and 3/4 circle skirt. I started with a full circle and took it in at the side seams until it fit nicely over the crinoline layer. I used black satin from my stash to make the base layer that the ruffles attach to. I wanted a semi crisp look to the ruffles and made them from black cotton cut into strips, narrow hemmed and gathered. I made use of a few specialty feet for my sewing machine to make this process go a bit faster.
To make the narrow hem, I used a narrow hem foot. While starting out this foot is a bit hard to use, the straight line hemming I was doing turned out to be easy once it was started. I still have not mastered using this foot on a curved hem. This foot was part of a set of vintage feet made by Greist I had gotten from my grandmother. I have been able to use the feet with no trouble on my modern machine.
I also made use of my ruffler foot to make all the ruffles. Again, there is a bit of a learning curve to this foot as well, but it saves time and my hands when making so many gathers.
The skirt was finished by adding a zipper closure in the back, a waistband, and hook/eye closure. I connected the underskirt to the skirt with the waistband to make the skirt one piece.
Next up is the corset. I'll write about that one in my next post.
Comments