WrenW
New Member
Hey all! Long time builder, first time poster. Every year, my friend's daughter asks me to make her a costume for San Diego ComicCon and I wanted to share this year's creation: Wasp from Avenger's Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
I started with the headset by wandering around the craft store for a few hours and finding things that looked like the pieces of the headgear. I used nightlights, frosting piping tips, and the handles of cheap paintbrushes. And the headband from a pair of earmuffs. And a healthy amount of glue.
I painted all the pieces first--taking apart the nightlights and painting the inside of the light cover green. Then I glued it all together. In retrospect, it would have worked better if I'd glued them together and then painted them, but oh well....
I glued the back covers of each nightlight to the earmuff headband, put in the batteries, and attached the earpieces. And then I tried them on because this is the only piece of this costume I could actually try on.
For the wings, I found some basic wire and cellophane wing tutorials on the internet and went from there. I made the outer frame of the wing by bending 12 gauge floral wire into shapes along a paper template I'd made and twisting together at the bottom. I used a 16 gauge wire to do the inner veins and some white floral tape to hold the veins in place.
When the wire frames were complete, I laid out yellow and iridescent cellophane and sandwiched the frame inside. Then I put a towel over the top and ironed the cellophane until it formed to the frames. I used a heat gun to seal the edges, but I got a little overzealous in a few spots and had to make some repairs with glue. (You can see those held together to dry with bulldog clips...Ooops)
On to the dress. I started with McCall's M7492 pattern--its a skater dress with leggings and arm guantlets--so pretty much all the parts I needed. In theory. I drew the black and yellow delineations onto the pattern and cut it apart. (I'm slightly embarrassed that I was well into this project before I realized that its a W. Facepalm) I used a medium weight lycra so that I could use the same fabric for the dress and leggings and gloves because it had some good stretch to it.
The dress went together fairly easily. The first V-shaped seam was a bit dodgey but then I realized the trick was to sew everything except the very bottom of the V first and then go in and finagle the bottom part last. And that was how I did all the blocks except for the little black "stinger" on the back bottom of the skirt, which I just appliqued because duh. I used clear plastic bra straps for the straps--I was originally going to do the top with sheer fabric, figure-skater style, (for modesty) but she requested the straps so I guess I'm just a square.
The leggings were another story. I had planned to make them the same way as the dress but the zig-zags were too small to seam cleanly. I put them together, but they were all puckery and terrible so in the end I took them apart and appliqued the yellow edges into place. I ran into another problem here because I wanted the leggings to transition down into boot-toppers but the leggings have side-seams and boot tops need to seam in the front and back. I tried to figure out a way to do this without having an actual human leg and foot to pin around, (My leg was too big. Also, have you ever tried to pin around your own leg? It sucks.) but I just couldn't make it work so I had to put an ankle seam between the leggings and the boot-tops. Ask me how I feel about this? Jk, don't. I hate it.
The gloves, too, turned out to be a bit thorny (it's weird, troubles tend to pop up where you weren't expecting them) because I had to incorporate the black gauntlet and the wider yellow piece, but the yellow piece needed enough body to stand stiff-ish but they couldn't be too thick when I put all the pieces together. So I made a pair where the yellow fabric was interfaced and it was too thick so I had to recut that bit and do it again without interfacing. It was a whole thing...
I got a great glove pattern from this website though: http://sew-ing.com/make/gloves.html I'd actually never made a pair of gloves before, but the glove part wasn't actually as bad as I thought it was going to be.
Oh, that last thing I did was run a channel of stiff belting down the center back of the dress to insert the stem of the wings into so that they didn't have to have separate straps. I'm not 100 percent confident that was the best way to attach them, but it was the best idea I could come up with at the time.
Anyway, apparently she was a big hit at ComicCon.
I started with the headset by wandering around the craft store for a few hours and finding things that looked like the pieces of the headgear. I used nightlights, frosting piping tips, and the handles of cheap paintbrushes. And the headband from a pair of earmuffs. And a healthy amount of glue.
I painted all the pieces first--taking apart the nightlights and painting the inside of the light cover green. Then I glued it all together. In retrospect, it would have worked better if I'd glued them together and then painted them, but oh well....
I glued the back covers of each nightlight to the earmuff headband, put in the batteries, and attached the earpieces. And then I tried them on because this is the only piece of this costume I could actually try on.
For the wings, I found some basic wire and cellophane wing tutorials on the internet and went from there. I made the outer frame of the wing by bending 12 gauge floral wire into shapes along a paper template I'd made and twisting together at the bottom. I used a 16 gauge wire to do the inner veins and some white floral tape to hold the veins in place.
When the wire frames were complete, I laid out yellow and iridescent cellophane and sandwiched the frame inside. Then I put a towel over the top and ironed the cellophane until it formed to the frames. I used a heat gun to seal the edges, but I got a little overzealous in a few spots and had to make some repairs with glue. (You can see those held together to dry with bulldog clips...Ooops)
On to the dress. I started with McCall's M7492 pattern--its a skater dress with leggings and arm guantlets--so pretty much all the parts I needed. In theory. I drew the black and yellow delineations onto the pattern and cut it apart. (I'm slightly embarrassed that I was well into this project before I realized that its a W. Facepalm) I used a medium weight lycra so that I could use the same fabric for the dress and leggings and gloves because it had some good stretch to it.
The dress went together fairly easily. The first V-shaped seam was a bit dodgey but then I realized the trick was to sew everything except the very bottom of the V first and then go in and finagle the bottom part last. And that was how I did all the blocks except for the little black "stinger" on the back bottom of the skirt, which I just appliqued because duh. I used clear plastic bra straps for the straps--I was originally going to do the top with sheer fabric, figure-skater style, (for modesty) but she requested the straps so I guess I'm just a square.
The leggings were another story. I had planned to make them the same way as the dress but the zig-zags were too small to seam cleanly. I put them together, but they were all puckery and terrible so in the end I took them apart and appliqued the yellow edges into place. I ran into another problem here because I wanted the leggings to transition down into boot-toppers but the leggings have side-seams and boot tops need to seam in the front and back. I tried to figure out a way to do this without having an actual human leg and foot to pin around, (My leg was too big. Also, have you ever tried to pin around your own leg? It sucks.) but I just couldn't make it work so I had to put an ankle seam between the leggings and the boot-tops. Ask me how I feel about this? Jk, don't. I hate it.
The gloves, too, turned out to be a bit thorny (it's weird, troubles tend to pop up where you weren't expecting them) because I had to incorporate the black gauntlet and the wider yellow piece, but the yellow piece needed enough body to stand stiff-ish but they couldn't be too thick when I put all the pieces together. So I made a pair where the yellow fabric was interfaced and it was too thick so I had to recut that bit and do it again without interfacing. It was a whole thing...
I got a great glove pattern from this website though: http://sew-ing.com/make/gloves.html I'd actually never made a pair of gloves before, but the glove part wasn't actually as bad as I thought it was going to be.
Oh, that last thing I did was run a channel of stiff belting down the center back of the dress to insert the stem of the wings into so that they didn't have to have separate straps. I'm not 100 percent confident that was the best way to attach them, but it was the best idea I could come up with at the time.
Anyway, apparently she was a big hit at ComicCon.
