In 2014 I started working on Harley Quinn’s costume from Batman Arkham Knight.
This costume really helped me learn how to sew as I had to make an entire ruffled skirt from scratch. In addition, this costume includes leather work, wig alterations and other fun little tricks of the trade 🙂

I never made a real tutorial, but I did take some in progress pics. I’m hoping I can help someone with these 🙂

 

The leggings were constructed from two pairs of leggings from Forever 21: a red one and a blue one. I bought a bigger size on purpose because they shrink a bit when you take them apart and sew them back together again. Also, I wanted these to be as comfy as possible 🙂
The squares were painted on using Fabric Dye, outlined first with chalk and ironed into place.

The bra I used was an old Marlies Dekkers bra. I hand sewed fabric over it to cover the cups and made my own bias tape out of fabric to top it off. Beware: the bigger your cups are, the harder this will be to get right!

The skirt was made with a heavy duty cotton. First, I made a basic short pencil skirt with an elastic waist. Then I took long strips of fabric (make these longer than you want the actual showing strips to be because you need to hide the seams underneath each ruffled section) and wrinkled the fabric. I then sewed them all on.

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I then hand sewed three or four layers of lace onto the skirt. Now, in game, her lace is more see through, but I made this costume wayyy before the game came out 😉

The finished skirt with the lace. Here, you can also see the collar I made. It’s made from simple pleather and a metal O-ring. The two straps will later be attached to the straps of the bra.

I made two circles of pleather (glued them together, sewing will put too big a strain on the material) and stitched those to the sleeves with a few simple stitches.

The boots were simple black boots that I spray painted with some all purpose spray paint. I still had some studs from an older project and glued those to the boots. They don’t stay on very long, but I see no better way of doing this.

 

Making the harness was a b***.  I first made a suspenders style harnass that could be tied together on the sides. I then used rivets to secure the rings in place. This took a lot of measuring (especially the parts over the boobs) and cursing. The key is to take your time, plan out the design and look at what other cosplayers are doing! Jessica Nigri’s harness (made by Maisedesigns) was excellently crafted and gave me a good idea on how to approach it.

This is the back of the harness. Now, ideally, the two vertical bands would have been entirely straight, but that would mean that the harness wouldn’t look as good from the front. This is why I opted to move them in a tad so it’d look better.

And there you have it! I hope this helps someone out there tackling this costume! If you need more info, tips, questions, please do let me know!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

www.ravenstarcosplay.com