Lady Booster Gold with Glowing Star

As promised, "the how" of the Booster Gold costume worn to Wizard World Philly.

Watch the glowing star......

The making of:

I've made several Booster Gold costumes in this past year, and the design has really grown on me. I wanted to adapt the costume and make it girlie. I decided on long pants, baby tee, "Ramona" style star bag and some matching star gloves. I made the gloves fingerless because it's cool, and I could paint my fingernails to match.

Anyway, back to all the pattern pieces, this design always causes a ton of pieces! Top front piece and the star.

Stitching the star onto spandex with my new sewing machine using a satin stitch.

Completely stitched! Stitching a symbol onto spandex usually causes wrinkles in the fabric like this, but it being stretched while being worn on the body usually fixes that.

Stitched all the yellow parts of the shirt together. I used the serger because it is the magic machine especially for spandex.

Yellow parts.

Blue parts serged together, then I joined the top and bottom.

Part of the reason I chose to make this costume was that was fairly quick to make. The icing on the costume was the EL wire around the star.

High brightness EL wire.

First, I prepared one end to attach the light side connector to hook up to the battery pack. I first stripped some of the plastic sheath exposing the center wire and those little hair wire. I wrapped a tiny bit of copper tape around the wire.

Then I soldered the 'hair' wire to the copper tape.

I scraped some of the powder coating off of the center wire, and prepared it to be soldered to the lightside wire connector. The lightside wire connector enables you to be able to plug the wire into the battery pack.

The lightside wire connector soldered to the EL wire. That whole connection is then protected with heat shrink tubing.

EL wire can be shaped, the ease with which on can bend or shape the wire largely depends on the diameter or the manufacturer of the wire- also the shape you are trying to conform it to.

I can attach the wire with the sewing machine when it is straight line or gentle curve, this star definitely needed to be stitched by hand. Also in case you are wondering it was 2.5mm high brightness wire. I had it blinking all day at the con and without needing to change the battery.

It glows!

The power behind the star!

 I stitched a little pocket behind the star to hold the battery pack.


Thoughts about EL wire: it's cool, no doubt, but delicate. I have some wire that I stitched into a spiral pattern on a purse and it no longer fully lights up. While the wire is flexible it doesn't seem to respond well to being flexed a lot. It's great for special items and costumes, but I have my doubts about it's durability. I haven't been working with EL wire for that long, so I'll continue to update as I learn and experience!


Onto the bag....

Rockstar purse, stuffed to capacity, because that's how I carry.
Obviously this is the Ramona star bag. I was working on the Ramona design and working on my Booster costume, when it occurred to me that they would look great together.

The stars for the bag, fused into place before stitching.

My favorite, piping! Extra excitement this time because it is contrast piping- whoa major fabric nerd out.

Also I have found a great web source for metal hardware. They have no miniums, large selection, low prices, and the best part, many metal parts come in every color of the rainbow, so I just had to coordinate!

Metal blue slider to adjust strap so you can switch between over the shoulder and across body carrying styles.

Metal blue loops for strap attachment.

Metal zipper with blue zipper tape, though I think I may switch back to nylon zippers for similar projects.