She-Ra
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Boston Comic-Con 2019
For this Comic-Con, there was no question that my daughter was going to be She-Ra. The 2018 Netflix series stars a snarky, confident heroine with a cadre of funny, flawed friends and a campy costume that was fun to make.
I used a basic cosplay bodysuit pattern to make the tunic top, then drew the star design onto gold spandex, cut it out, and fabric-glued it to the white spandex.* I used the same gold spandex to cover the foam on the stiff collar and shoulder pads, and as the trim on the shorts and tunic.
The sword blade was originally part of a plastic play sword that I covered in blue enamel model paint and sealed with lacquer. I cut the hilt from EVA foam, painted it gold and glued it around the blade.
The headpiece and bracers are EVA foam, shaped with a heat gun and covered in gold spandex.
The cape is red spandex. She-Ra doesn’t have a scabbard, so I hid one inside the cape where it meets the tunic clasp.
I ordered faux-leather boots and cut them down to match the shape of She-Ra’s boots, then painted them to match.
This was a really fun costume to make. I haven’t had a lot of experience with spandex before, but I didn’t have to do too much fiddly sewing for this project. There’s a lot of fabric glue in these pictures.
As with all my Comic-Con costumes, looks and accuracy were important, but comfort after hours on the con floor on a hot August day weighed heavily in how I designed it. She wasn’t going to have an accurately scaled sword, for example; it’d be three feet high and prohibitively heavy!
DOH. My first attempt at the tunic looked great… until I realized that I’d glued the star onto the lining fabric, not the outer fabric. So I set it aside, then turned it into a throw pillow for my daughter’s room, stuffed with all the white scraps from the She-Ra project.
