Batgirl made an appearance quite a few times in Batman: The Animated Series. We were planning a fancy dress party in 2001 with the theme 'Heroes and Villans', and as my boyfriend was going as Spiderman, I wanted to choose a comic book character too. It was hard to decide between Harley Quinn, and Batgirl, but since I didn't have much time, it was easier to do Batgirl, as I had a lot of fabric and pieces already. I'm in the planning stages of Harley Quinn, and it's on my list for 2005.
I bought the leggings, and I already had the black top, which was close fitting with a high collar. I already had black boots. She was supposed to have yellow boots, but I ran out of time, and my experiments had not gone well. My glove experiments also did not go well, so I wore some black ones that I already had. I made the belt out of yellow lycra, in one piece, folded over and sewn. It's stretchy enough to step into, and put into place. It hides the bottom edge of the black top. I made the bat insignia out of the same yellow lycra, and stiffened it up with iron on interfacing. It was attached using sticky velcro dots, so that they could easily come off later.
I didn't use a pattern for the cape. I don't remember how I did it actually. I didn't have much fabric, so I couldn't make it very full. It seemed to look okay, but if I ever did it again, I'd do the cape properly. The outer black layer is black lycra that I had spare, and the lining is the same yellow lycra I used for everything else. It's sewn together at the front so that I can put it on over my head. It stayed in place very well and was really quite comfortable.
I made the cowl from scratch, and it was kind of fun. It was very easy to make. I used a stretchy but strong lycra, making two pieces that were around the shape and size of my head, and adjusted it on myself, cutting out the holes, and making it fit. The ears are just pieces of the same lycra doubled over and sewn on. They were fairly stiff, and held up well.
I bought the mask from a wig shop. You can't tell very well from the photo, but I have a long ponytail coming out the back of the cowl. That's not my real hair. My real hair was a short bob haircut at that stage. I bought one of those clips that has the hair attached. You put your hair up in a ponytail, and it hangs down and makes it look like you have long hair. I took the hair off the clip, and pinned the hair to a split in the cowl. It fooled a lot of people, who didn't realise until later in the night that my hair was longer.
Since I was taking all the photos of everyone else, there is only one photo of me. The background had to be cut out, as it wasn't very suitable.
