Ada's Epic Wonder Woman Halloween Costume

Ada's Epic Wonder Woman Halloween Costume

At some point during kindergarten last year Ada was introduced to super heroes and decided that Wonder Woman was the best out of all of them. Slowly, since then, her love of Wonder Woman has grown until she eventually told me she wanted to be Wonder Woman when she grew up… and for Halloween. I, personally, don’t know what’s going to happen for Halloween this year but I do know that I’d love to have more awesome outfits in our dress up drawer to choose from so I told her yes and immediately started planning on how to make it happen. Luckily, before I started I stumbled across the perfect costume at our local Costco. I wanted to share this costume, along with what we added to it, sooner, rather than later, in case the costumes get bought up quickly.

Pinterest image showing a collage of four images of Ada in her costume (also shown below), the blog title, my URL, and a couple Halloween clip-arts featuring pumpkins, a ghost, and a spider on it's web.

In addition to Halloween this year Ada also wanted to dress up as Wonder Woman for her birthday party so I knew I had to jump on creating her costume early. I started planning out what to do and looked for the iconic blue knit fabric with white stars on it in online fabric stores. The only fabric I could find that I liked was either swim or a cheap costume spandex that I didn’t see being comfortable to wear day in and day out in case this became the new favorite outfit. In addition I was also having difficulties coming up with how to make a detailed top. I considered using white cotton fabric with the Rebecca Page Olivia top so I could design her shirt with all of the needed details using fabric markers. Luckily, at this point, I sat down with Ada and started showing her my plans just to find out her vision of the top was a simple red shirt with the W logo on it. She did love my blue skort (connected skirt and legging) idea and, while looking at Wonder Woman’s photos, we decided to use her red shoes instead of the Wonder Woman boots. Overall way simpler than I had thought and I’m so glad we went over the costume idea together before I got too far in the process.

Image shows Ada standing in our kitchen holding up the white decorated front bodice piece so I could grab a photo of her with her creation.
Back near the beginning of July I made the girls each a new nightgown, using my Olivia and Patsy mashup, and Ada chose to trace the Wonder Woman logo (through The Graveyard by The Lair of Gary James) onto the white bodice fabric and colored it in with fabric markers before adding in drawings of her current DUPLO® creations.

This story then gets even simpler as before I ordered fabric or started working on anything I ended up finding the perfect costume at Costco; about two weeks ago. The one time I was super excited that the Halloween stuff coming in early. I ended up agonizing, off to the side, about which size I should get and even brought up the sizing guide on the Rubie’s Costume Company website before I finally made myself choose. When I got home Ada was ecstatic and I, as I wasn’t sure how best to launder it and I didn’t want to wreck it before her party, then put the costume into a one week quarantine just in case. Ada finally got to try it on a couple days before her party and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it also contained more accessories than I had realized making it even better.

As the main costume was essentially just a dress I went ahead and made Ada the skort so she could wear it under the costume or with something else in the future (like her first day distance learning). Since the dress was going to be hidden I dug through my fabric stash and found two different blue knit fabric remnants and used them instead of buying new fabric as I didn’t need the skirt to be starred anymore. In the end I used the more structured and darker knit fabric to create the leggings, reaching right below the knees, using the Apostrophe Patterns’ MyFit Leggings. Before sewing the waistband onto the pants I purchased and used the Apostrophe Patterns’ Circle Skirt Generator to create an above the knee skirt, using the lighter fabric, and then serged the three pieces together, sandwiching the skirt between the leggings and waistband, to create a custom fitted blue skort.

Photo is an overview of a blue skort laid out on the floor. I used a darker fabric for the leggings and waistband and a lighter fabric for the full skirt.
The just finished comfy skort. Ada helped me while generating the pattern for the skirt part and chose to have it in six pieces and left unhemmed. The leggings themselves where the simplest version with a hemmed bottom.

At this point we tried on the costume and leggings and discovered all the cool accessories the costume came with. Ada loved how it all fit!

Closeup view of the front of Ada's costume with the homemade leggings poking out the bottom of the dress.
Quick view of the front…
View of the back of the outfit. The blue leggings are, again, poking out from below the skirt and the skirt overlay hides the skirt itself, from the back.
… and back of the costume.

As a quick aside before the party I noticed that the skirt overlay (which can also be flipped over and attached at the shoulders for a cape) kept disconnecting from the dress. I assumed it was the costume’s problem and grabbed some sewing clips, making sure to pick ones matching Wonder Woman’s color scheme, to keep the skirt overlay attached during the party. Afterwards, I hunted down my sew-on hook and loop tape so I could make the skirt more secure and realized that there was fabric covering up the hook part of the skirt’s Velcro. I didn’t have to fix anything and I know that it will be secure for Halloween.

Closeup of the belt part of the dress. You can see a blue sewing clip holding the edge of the skirt overlay to the bottom of the red bodice fabric on either side.
Figured I’d share how I used my sewing clips to keep the skirt overlay attached to the dress and belt. In the back I added several more clips and later found a broken one on the couch.
Closeup of the upper corner of the skirt overlay showing the blue fabric pulled back so the blue hooked Velcro is visible. Beside it sits white Velcro, scissors, and crazy glue that wasn't needed.
I was going to use my crazy glue to attach some of my white sew-on hook and loop tape to the skirt overlay just to realize that the square I thought was a softer hooked Velcro was, in fact, fabric covering the hooked side of the Velcro I needed to have used.

For Ada’s party we had bought a set of capes for all the guests living nearby, before finding the costume, and so we used one of those. I had also purchased an iron-on Wonder Woman logo, through Amazon, and after telling Ada about it and giving her the choice on if she wanted it on the cape or a red shirt, in the future, she chose the cape. Since I didn’t want to melt the cape I used black thread and machine sewed the W on, zigzagging around the outside edge, instead of ironing it to the cape. I guess this way if the cape rips I could, technically, seam rip the logo off and use it again for something else.

Closeup of the red cape with the black edged yellow Wonder Woman log pinned on. The yellow pins stand out at the top and bottom of the W but there are other smaller ones along the top of the logo too.
I had Ada choose where on the cape she wanted the logo placed and then I made sure to use a pin in each point so it wouldn’t move on me.
Closeup of the logo on the cape as it's being sewn together in my sewing machine. My left hand holds the fabric while my right hand snapped the photo. To the left you can see Ada's hand, a doll's head, and part of Ada as she watches.
Ada watched as I zigzagged stitched around the outside of the logo, making sure to stay within the black section, so my stitches weren’t visible from the front. As I approached each pin I stopped the machine so Ada could remove the pins herself.

And, after Ada added some temporary stickers to the cape, the costume was finished and ready to go!

Front view of Ada in her costume including the skort and cape we added. Her arms are crossed in front of her face showing the arm guards and the tiara.
Posing as Wonder Woman.
View from the back showing the skirt overlay starting to fall off, the decorated cape, and a POW balloon we added for super heroine training.
I love how the cape turned out!

In case you’re debating heading to Costco to get your own costume I have to admit that I can’t remember how much the Wonder Woman costume was and I can’t find it on their website to check. That said, I ended up buying Zoey a unicorn costume, through a different brand called TeeTot, that came complete with hooves, a horn/ear headband, and wings for $33 U.S. based on the website later on.

The TeeTot unicorn costume came with pants (with hoof overlay), dress with a longer (tail) section, hoof armbands, headband with ears/horn/tulle main, and wings. Figure this one costume could go towards a unicorn, pony, butterfly, and many other costumes in the future.

I’m so glad I stumbled across the Wonder Woman costume before I ended up buying fabric and making it myself. I wanted to share with you the costume, in case you want to buy your own, and what I had originally planned to do and add to the costume in case you’re making your own. The only item we’re still missing is Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth. Ada hasn’t asked about it yet but I started wondering if I could purchase gold or yellow yarn and crochet a makeshift belt that could give the look of a lasso around her waist, and be simple to not lose, or crochet a rolled up version to attach at her hip. I started looking up potential solutions online and came across this Glowing Wonder Woman Lasso through Hendo At on YouTube. Matt is planning on surprising Ada with a lasso of truth creation session, once the supplies are delivered, and I can update this section once they’re done so you can know if it’s worth making yourself.

Update: August 22nd – Ada and, mostly, Matt just made the Wonder Woman glowing lasso of truth following Hendo Art’s YouTube video. It turned out amazingly! We deviated from her instructions by using a single of the mesh tube, since it looked golden already, and covering the handle with black foam sheets rather than painted masking tape.

Wonder Woman holding up her lasso of truth. The black handle is in her hand and the glowing lasso hangs and drapes onto the floor.
Image from above of Ada, as Wonder Woman, holding up the glowing lasso of truth, while blocking her face from attacks.
Wonder Woman crouched with her lasso of truth wrapped around her crochet doll trying to extract the truth.

If you want to see a truly amazing Wonder Woman cosplay costume I absolutely love ambrose_cosplay’s one on Instagram along with her finished trenchcoat for her Diana Prince persona.

Have you bought or made a Wonder Woman costume before? If you made it what patterns and fabric did you use? If Ada keeps loving Wonder Woman I could definitely see making different versions over time. I would also love to sew her a simple top that works with the skort I made her so she can feel like Wonder Woman while still seemingly be dressed less costume-y; kind of like the Disneybounding costumes I’ve heard about. I’d love to hear from you in the comments below and I hope your day is going great.


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