Bombshell Wonder Woman: Part 1

By far the most popular costume I did last year, Bombshell Wonder Woman was a load of fun. I adore Ant Lucia's Bombshell designs. I think they're so clever, really cute, and I would happily do most, if not all of them. But with the movie coming out, it was Wonder Woman's time.

Photo by Lynn Guthrie

I got lucky back in 2016 when I went home finding one of the Hot Topic Bombshell shirts on sale for just about nothing. They had the shorts too, which I bought, but I actually didn't end up liking the styling on the shorts at all, at least on me.

Hot Topic base

The shirt though, that had definite potential.

I liked the fit, the colours were pretty close, and most importantly, I already owned it. But there was a lot about it that wasn't accurate to the original design. My brain being what it is, this had to be remedied.

First off was the pocket. I took it off easily enough, and it hung around in my wallet for a while as colour swatch for buying thread. I eventually realised she needed a star on her handkerchief that was about the same colour, so I ended up cutting the star out of the pocket, with the Wonder Woman symbol still on it as a bit of fun.

Look at me, putting my star on upside down!
Back to the top. Then it came time to tackle the opening. To be honest, this was my first mistake. I should not have done the zipper until after I'd done the embroidery, but there you have it. Learn from my mistakes, people!

I used the closed flat ends of my tailor tips to pry apart the snaps that were used to hold the shirt closed. There were tiny holes in the fabric, but once I put in the zipper, which I placed to remove some of the bulk, most weren't noticeable. The rest happily were covered by the embroidery and where they weren't, the focal part of the embroidery is such that nobody, including me, notices them anymore.

I just put in a big chunky white zipper, as that nicely provided me with the line that is in the original design. Which I naturally forgot to take any photos of.

For the embroidery, I wanted to do more than simply outline the symbol lines. If you look at Ant Lucia's original design, its almost like there are light and darker shades of the red that make up the whole thing. So I bought a bunch of different threads, tested them out, and eventually settled on two that I liked. I happened to own actual gold thread, so that had to get used.


First I figured out how I wanted the pattern to look. I took my pattern pieces and pinned them on to my fabric with an embroidery stabiliser behind the material.

Then I ran around the design with a straight stitch which secured the stabiliser to the fabric and meant that I had a guideline of where to put my embroidery.

The "embroidery" is nothing other than a really close zig zag stitch on the machine.


I know a lot of people will call this Satin Stitch, but to me satin stitch is done with way more precision, usually padded, and done by hand. So I'm not going to call it that. But it was still painstaking, trying to get it all to line up nicely.

Oh, the ties in the front of the shirt? I just simply tucked them in on the day so that I can wear it with jeans or something else some other time.

One of those "other times" because of course you wear Wonder Woman gear to a protest
As I said above, I didn't really like the shorts I bought in Hot Topic, and they're not easily alterable to make them either more accurate, or better fitting. I also didn't really want hot pants. But I did already own a pair of vintage high-waisted navy shorts from Unique Vintage.


I found the cutest star buttons, and what's more vintage than cute buttons? So I took off the sailor buttons from the shorts, and put on the new stars.


That was it. That was the shorts done. God I love simple things.

The handkerchief was surprisingly not as simple as I expected. Not only did I end up putting the star on upside down (see above), but I decided that it wasn't just that it all tied at the side.


I ended up cutting up a plain cotton handkerchief in not quite half, adding strips to go around my head, and then creating a bow to stay on the side of my head.


This meant that the bow wouldn't slip and it staying on my head wouldn't be based on that knot.

The last of the sewing was the boots. Which of course I decided to tackle like an idiot because that's how you make your first pair of boot covers, but that will wait.

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