You have to do a Harley Quinn costume at some point don’t you, it’s ones of the rules
Got back into cosplay a bit earlier this year and after seeing the Suicide Squad (actually I quite enjoyed the movie) movie decided I wanted to that particular version of Harley. If you can’t beat them, join them
Like many many other I just ordered one off Ebay and various accessories from Amazon, because I’m lazy and am not particularly good at sewing. I arrived and it fitted (Which can be a problem because I’m on the large side), but then I noticed how much was wrong. I’m lazy but also a perfectionist, which isn’t a good combination.
First the short shorts. The ones supplied where shiny lycra and although they fitted, they didn’t fit quite right. Also the ones in the film are sequinned not plain spandex. So DIY. Found red and blue sequin fabric in a couple of local fabric shops and I drafted a pattern that would ever so slightly cheeky. I read horrors about sewing sequin fabrics on the net and how you had to remove all the sequins along the seam lines first, but I tried it on my sewing machine and it seemed to punch right through the sequins with little effort. I was worried about bits falling into the machines workings though, so I sewed over a sheet of tissue paper. I also made them high waist instead of low rise because I don’t have the figure to go around flashing mid rift.
First test pair where OK, but rather scratchy and a little see through, they definitely needed lining. Mk II where deemed to be a keeper, I used stretch Suba fabric for the lining, but even with that they’re still a bit scratchy, so I’m going to wear thick dance tights underneath.
The accessories where a mixed bag, some like the purple cuffs where OK, but the collar was too small (As I said, I’m rather large) and the spiked cuffs were strips of gold leatherette that fasten with a press stud, not cuff bangles like they are in the film. I took the letters and buckle from the original collar and made a new one with some synthetic leather sprayed gold. For the cuffs. I found some very cheap and simple cuff bangles in Primark and just glued and trimmed the leather on to them. The belt was originally a simply a regular black and silver studded belt, I sprayed the studs gold, remove the buckle and instead used Velcro to secure it and made the diamond out of PVC foamboard.
As I’d got most of the costume together and it appeared to work I ordered some boots. The film ones, as was very quickly pointed out, where Adidas by Jeremy Scott, part of his 2014 collection, but with the orange bits recoloured red. These where £250 new, but I think the film made them collectors’ items and they now go, if you can find them, for even sillier money. And I severely doubt they ever came in my size anyway. So it’s going to have to be a replica pair, there’s dozens of them on Ebay and cosplay sites, but most wouldn’t do my size (UK 9), but I eventually found a cosplay site that said they would. They arrived quicker than expected but where rather disappointing. First they weren’t very accurate and had kitten heels not stilettoes, the build quality wasn’t great and they didn’t fit, they where too narrow and rather painful after wearing them for five minutes. Oh well, I found buying stuff from cosplay sites in China to be rather hit and miss, sometimes it’s great and fits perfectly and other times, oh dear.
So boots Mk II. I looked around for some base boots in white matt synthetic leather, the nearest I could find where some inexpensive Go Go boots off Ebay, but they had block heels and a larger platform, which isn’t perfect, but it would have to do. I really wanted a pair of Devious INDULGE 2000 boots as they're almost perfect, but they don't seem to come in white anymore.
Converting them to something that looked like the film boots took a while. I found I could draw on the matt white leather with a 2b pencil and rub it out afterwards, so I just drew on where the black bits had to go and then copied the parts off with tracing paper to make patterns. My reliable local fabric shops provided cheap synthetic leather in black, red and white, though the white wasn’t quite a perfect match, but what to attach it to the boots with. I couldn’t get most of the parts and the boots through a sewing machine, so it’s going to have to be glue. I tried half a dozen glues, super glue and even contact glue didn’t seem to work very well and didn’t hold, neither did fabric glue or hot glue, but seemed to work best was regular Bostik all-purpose clear. Reading up on it I found the solvent in it slightly melts PVC (synthetic leather) and thus bonds it rather well. Also its cheap and easy to get, gives a little working time, but it can be messy and stringy though.
The base boots had to be shorted a little and a couple of holes cut into them. After that it was basically just cutting out the new leatherette parts, sometime I made them oversized and trimmed to fit and gluing them on the boots. I did a little decorative top stitching on some of the bits as well. The eyelets where sourced from Ebay, white ones proved a little hard to find than regular silver or brass ones. The Adidas logo’s where downloaded off Google image search, resized and printed onto transfer paper. Then I ironed them onto a piece of white cotton (I tried ironing them on to the synthetic leather… bad mistake, the leather just melted and I had to clean the iron) and cut and glue the cotton patches to the leather. The heels where simply brush painted red with Liquitex acrylic.
There’s a couple of bits left to do, I need better flat laces, Ebay can provide them and there’s a strap that goes over the front but I need a rectangular split ring for them. Also have to do the left boot now.
