Walkthrough: Nightclub Harley Quinn Dress

I wasn't the biggest fan of "Suicide Squad" but I did like the costumes. I already made Harley's main outfit, but I also like this dress she wears in a flashback scene. The original dress is made of metal mesh, with a black and gold diamond pattern.

Although I quite liked this design, I wanted to try something a little different. I decided to make a dress based on this one, but in red and black.

Here's the design I drew up. 

I looked at a LOT of tutorials to make this dress, and I'll provide links to them here, as they were incredibly useful.

METAL MESH 

The Making of Harley Quinn Nightclub Dress + Wig! (Suicide Squad Cosplay/Halloween Costume Tutorial) by Natasha Rose 

Making Harley Quinn Night Club Dress Part 1 

Harley Quinn Night Club Dress Part 2 

Harley Quinn dress gold "Suicide Squad" / Vestido rombos dorado 

Ebbi Cosplay ♡ The making of Harley Quinn club dress by Ebbi Cosplay 

OLD FOOTAGE: Clubbing Dress BTS by Laura Gilbert 

 SEQUINS 

Making Harley Quinn's Club Dress-Suicide Squad | Part 1 by Arlena Fae 

Making Harley Quinn's Club Dress-Suicide Squad | Part 2 by Arlena Fae 

Making Harley Quinn's Club Dress-Suicide Squad | Part 3 (FINALE) by Arlena Fae 

Harley Quinn Suicide Squad Cosplay 'Date Night' Dress DIY Tutorial by Rockelle 

Harley Quinn Club Scene Dress Tutorial by TEoELLE 

How I Made My Harley Quinn Club Dress//COSPLAY TUTORIAL by EverSoMeTutorials 

DIY VESTIDO ARLEQUINA (HARLEY QUINN CLUBE DRESS) 3 Formas by DIY Talitah Sampaio

OTHER

HARLEY QUINN CLUB DRESS TUTORIAL // Ally Sorge by Ally Sorge

I followed TEoELLE and Arlena Fae's advice for drafting a pattern. I took the measurement  of the widest part of my hips, the bust measurement (with allowance for the fabric to drape), and the distance from top edge to bottom edge of the dress on the back and front.

I used lining fabric to make this mockup: I eventually used it to line the real dress. I checked the fit on myself and my dress form. The dress form was useful for playing around with the draping, but trying it on gave me a better idea of the actual fit and whether I could move in it.

Once I was happy with the lining, I had to do some maths to calculate the size of the diamonds, and how many I would need. The basic mathematics is as follows:

Height of the dress / number of diamonds

Width of the dress / number of diamonds

You can use these figures to draw a grid and work out the size of your diamonds. My diamonds were approximatley 17cm by 11cm. I made a template and added seam allowance (about 1cm)

Then I had to cut out the diamonds. A LOT of diamonds. I had half a yard each of black and red sequin material, which was just enough for all these diamonds. 

WARNING: be careful which grain you cut on. I cut my diamonds on the wrong grain, and the dress shrank when I sewed them all together. It fit fine width-wise, but was much too short. I was able to solve this by adding another row of black diamonds at the bottom, but it was a little annoying.

Once all the diamonds were cut out, I sewed them together in diagonal strips: Arlena Fae and TEoELLE demonstrate this in their tutorials. Then I sewed all the strips together. When I realised that my dress was too short, it was a bit difficult to sew on the extra black diamonds neatly. I have areas where the diamonds don't line up perfectly, but I have some spare sequins which I can sew on to disguise this.

Here's the dress with an extra row of black diamonds. I pinned on some black fringe to see how it would look. Some cosplayers just use sequin material and cut it into strips, but I don't think my material would hold up to this. It would probably shed sequins all over the place. 

I bought 2m of fringe, but perhaps I should have bought more.

To be continued . . . 

UPDATE

The Straps
So unfortunatley I forgot to take pictures when I was making the straps, but I can easily describe the process.
I bought some thin black elastic and black sequins, measured the straps to the correct length, then sewed on the sequins by hand. This took a while. I had to keep adjusting the straps' length, so I wish I had waited until later to sew on the sequins. 
Once the straps fitted well, I sewed on jump rings to both the dress and straps, and attached lobster clasps. The other end of the strap was sewn to the metal ring. The metal ring is a curtain ring, as I couldn't find a metal ring in the right size. 
For the chain, I cut pieces of black chain to the correct length. The pieces near the middle are a little shorter, while the pieces on the outside are a bit longer. The chains are attached to the ring with jump rings, and to the dress also with jump rings (the rings are held in place with elastic). 

 The Fringe
I have seen versions of this dress where the makers used sequin material to make the fringe. I didn't want to deal with loose sequins falling off the dress (my room is already covered with sequins from cutting out this dress; every time I think I've cleaned them up I find ten more). 

To sew the fringe on, I turned up the hem and pinned it in place. 

Next I cut a piece of fringe and pinned it to the hem, then sewed it on using a zigzag stitch (I think the particular type of stitch I used is called a lingerie stitch)

There were a few bald spots in the fringe. To fix this, I cut small pieces of fringe and glued them in place with fabric glue (I will sew them in place later). This type of fringe is annoying as it tries to unravel very quickly. 

Improving the fit
The dress was very loose at the back, as you can see in the pictures.

To improve the fit, I took a piece of elastic and pinned each end to the side seam on the inside of the dress. I stretched the elastic as I sewed it on (using a zigzag stitch), clipped the loose threads, and used a permanent marker to colour in the red thread that was visible on the black diamonds. This improved the fit drastically.
I also sewed bra cups into the front of the dress. I cut them off an old bra and pinned them in place while the dress was on the mannequin. I then hand-sewed them on to the dress.

For now I think that the dress is complete. I still need to make some accessories, such as a gun, a wig, and a small handbag to carry my things while I'm at conventions. I'm hoping to wear this to the summer edition of Malta Comic Con 2018. 

Suicide Squad: Harley Quinn: Wig

Wig time! For Harley Quinn, I bought a blonde wig from ebay. I chose one without a fringe. A lace front wig would have been ideal.

A friend (Vladas cosplay https://www.facebook.com/VLADAScosplay) helped me to put the wig into ponytails. 

She recommended adding wefts to the back to hide the wig base, which I did. I also curled Harley's "not fringe".

The next step: dying the ponytails.

 I used the FW Acrylic Ink/Rubbing alcohol/surgical spirit. I’ve heard that you need 91% isopropyl, but I bought normal surgical spirit at the pharmacy and it worked well enough.

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According to the tutorials I found, you should use 1 cup of surgical spirit mixed with 8 to 10 squirts of the ink - there a dropper in the lid of the ink which you can use to suck up ink. I’ve been warned against using colours containing white ink, so I used a cerulean for the blue tail, and a mix of red and pearlescent pink for the other tail (8: 2 ratio of red to pink ink). 

I mixed the ink in old jar and carefully dipped the ponytails in. Later I transferred the mixture into old plastic and styrofoam trays (the kind you get frozen meat in - clean it first!)

I left the wig to dye overnight, then carefully rinsed out each tail in the sink - it’s made of ceramic so is much easier to clean than the plastic bath. While I rinsed the blue tail, I used a hair clip and a plastic bag to keep the red tail from dripping everywhere. I rinsed out the ponytails with a mixture of shampoo and fabric softener. 

Once they tails were dry I combed them with a wig comb. Be warned that if you use normal detangling spray it may lift some of the colour from the dyed wig, and it also gave my blue tail a strange texture. In general wigs dyed with this method have a slightly rough texture, but if you rinse them thoroughly they should be fine.

I’m storing this wig with the ponytails plaited-it gives a nice wavy texture and stops them tangling.

Suicide Squad: Harley Quinn: The Accessories

My costume has come together. I;m going to see Suicide Squad tomorrow - maybe it's good, maybe it's terrible, but I guess I'll find out. Today let's look at the accessories.

Shoes

I found these boots in Budapest (I live there most of the year). They weren't too expensive, are much comfier than high heels, and looks quite similar to Harley Quinn's boots. There's a hidden wedge in these boots, so I look at bit taller.  

Glove

The glove is made from sleeves from an older sweater. I drew around my hand, and cut and pinned until it fitted well, then painted on the design with acrylic paint + fabric medium. I was a bit impatient waiting for the paint to dry, but it turned out all right.

Belt 

The belt is a Frankenstein-monster mash of an old stud belt, hot glue, a strip of vinyl, snap fasteners, and craft foam. I'm not sure how durable this belt will be, and I may remake it. I initially tried inserting the studs into the belt, but it was really hard to align the studs properly.

Bracelets

These are made from an old belt, craft foam, hot glue, and velcro. The weird marks are hot glue - I was initially going to use this belt to make the studded belt, changed my mind and ripped off the studs, but unfortunately the glue marks remained. 

Choker

This is also made from the same old belt that I used for the bracelets, painted white. The letters are also made of craft foam and are hot glued on. 

Holster

The holster isn't complete; I still need a toy gun and an actual holster to attach to the harness, but I can do that later. This is made from a strip of black vinyl, decorated with studs (I only had brass coloured ones, so painted them silver). I had this metal ring on my desk, and used it for the back of the holster.

Bag

 It's August and it is sweltering. Even at night it's pretty hot. All in all, Harley's jacket will probably be too hot to wear to the cinema. I need somewhere to keep my tickets, phone etc, so I made this drawstring bag. I used Annika Victoria's tutorial, which is excellent

Baseball Bat

I could have bought a real baseball bat . . .but you know, I must like making work for myself or something. So I made one from foam, following the excellent instructions in this tutorial:

I deviated from the instructions here and there. I shouldn't have used hot glue, because the edges were very uneven. 

Here's the basic bat I made. The core  is an old broomstick, sawed down to the right length. I primed it with a layer of light yellow acrylic paint.

 I painted the bat to a base colour, and added a subtle wood effect - it doesn't really show in these photos. I decorated it, and then my brother, my boyfriend and I decorated the bat with various Harley Quinn appropriate quotes. I wrapped the handle in a strip of thin white cloth, and that was it!

Suicide Squad: Harley Quinn: Shorts

These shorts - oh these shorts. I really recommend using stretchy sequin material, or buying two pairs of sequin shorts in red and blue, cutting them in half, and sewing them together. I used this material:

These are sequins sewn to a slightly stretchy mesh material. Since this is a bit see-through, it needed a backing fabric, and I used satin. So that meant a lot of messing around trying to create a good pattern. I used a combination of a Burdastyle shorts pattern, and another pattern made by copying an existing pair of shorts (made by covering shorts in masking tape to create a template)

This kind of sequin fabric is a bit annoying because it sheds sequins everywhere. There are still sequins in my bed and on the floor. You need to pick sequins out of the seam allowance so that the material can go through a sewing machine, though these sequins were so small that both my overlock machine and sewing machine could sew over them. Try to save any fallen sequins - you might need them.  

 The next step was to baste the sequin pieces to the satin pieces, then sew them into shorts. I also added bias tape to the leg hole so that the sequins wouldn't scratch me. Here's my cat, Pearl, helping me. I had to sew this by hand so that the stitches wouldn't be visible from the outside, and because I didn't want to try passing all the through the sewing machine.

So much work - and only one side is done!

 Hours later and the blue side is almost done

 And now sewn together

 I made my pattern too big by mistake, but this turned out to the advantageous, as it allowed me to add an elastic waistband, which was a lot less work than a zip.