Power Girl Cosplay – Leather gloves, bodysuit and cape, muscle suit and photoset – The Making Of
I built my Power Girl costume back in 2014, when my friend Riki (Riddle) was working on a new edition of the Cosplay for a Cause Calendar. There was already a lot of cosplayers who would provide a picture of a Marvel character, so she was looking for more DC characters and people had been asking me to do a Power Girl cosplay forever… With my short blond hair and big breasts, Power Girl seemed like an obvious cosplay choice that I refused to do for a long time. This cosplay had been seen so many times before… What more could I do? But with my friend insisting, I finally accepted… and I built a Power Girl cosplay Marie-Claude style! ;)
I started a making of blog about this costume, talked about the leather gloves and part of the boots making of process. You can read this blog here: https://mcbourbonnais.com/en/tag/power-girl/
NOTE: I’ve remodeled my workshop twice since these pics were taken, so my workshop doesn’t look like this anymore.
The leather gloves were a challenge because I had never sewed gloves before, I used the same cow hide for the gloves than for the boots and it was too thick to make the type of delicate women’s gloves I wanted to make. Plus, I didn’t have the proper equipment at the time. Leather gloves are usually sewed with a Bonis sewing machine for fur and I only had my plain walking foot sewing machine. I still succeeded in making these leather gloves, but they’re a little more ‘bulky’ than I wanted them to be. I could have used lambskin for the gloves and cow hide for the boots, but matching leather colors is a technical mystery I still haven’t solved. Which means I still have challenges coming up for other costumes in the future. ;)
Power Girl’s typical red cape seems like an easy thing, but there was actually a small challenge. The cape comes out, depending on the version, from a medallion or a shoulder piece. But in both cases, the cape is worn on one shoulder and necessary falls down on one side of the body. However, Power Girl is always drawn showing bits of her cape on each side of her body. It means that I had to sew specific pleats in the cape to send some fabric through the other side of the body and the cape was attached to the bodysuit with a little hook.
The muscle suit was the biggest challenge of this costume. It was actually Riki’s husband who suggested the idea. Maybe I had Power Girl’s breasts and hair color, but I didn’t have her muscles! lol Molding and casting my arms, sculpting the muscles over my arms’ casts, molding the muscle sculpture, casting the muscle suit in Smooth-On Ecoflex over a polyester mesh knit… It sounds like only a few steps, right? But this adventure at the time was the most complicated project I had ever undertaken, a project that wasn’t about sewing, something I had no idea how to do. ‘What an idea!’ I thought. But with the help of my Grumpy friend, who had never done anything like this either, we made it work… A learning project, all about experimenting, wasting material and starting all over again. I learned that when you pour silicone, you’d better make a huge hole in your mold, otherway, it will take forever to fill it up. I realized how big molds quickly become heavy and I later started making fiberglass shells for the molds because it’s lighter and not expensive. I made so many mistakes and learned so many things… But my friend and I made it. And Power Girl had muscles! :D
And finally… the photo set. The Cosplay for a Cause Calendar was produced to raise funds for a non-profit organization for animals rights, so each picture had to feature an animal. I wish I could have found a yellow cat like Power Girl’s cat in the comics, but my friend Esther had a gray cat. And since there’s a scene in one of the comics where Power Girl finds her cat all dirty, temporary gray, I thought it would be good enough for the picture. ;) The real star of that photoshoot is actually Peggy Sue, a lovely cat that was very afraid when it arrived at the workshop! lol Peggy Sue was too afraid to be left alone on the set, so the photographer had to take pics of the cat alone while my friend was nearby and then we did a photoshoot with me. The final picture was a montage, but the set was real, as you will see in the gallery. Notice that the set was built in front of the sci-fi wall that was built for the photoshoot of my Relic Knights Cerci costume. I loved that wall, but eventually had to destroy it to have more room in my workshop. Power Girl’s photo set included real trees that are still growing around my parent’s house today! :D
Make sure to check out the other gallery to see the making of Power Girl’s boots!