Black Canary

Black Canary is my favorite super hero. Because she's amazing. Duh. So when I decided to cosplay her I knew I had to make her perfect. Her version from JLA is my particular favorite.

Also fishnets:

Yes.

There was one thing super important to me. I wanted to make a costume flexible enough to actually fight crime in. I've never liked the idea of slapping a corset on over a leotard and calling it a day. Have you ever tried fighting crime in a corset? It isn't easy. So instead I made it my goal to have a strapless leotard. Which may or may not have been even more difficult than the corset. I used a shiny, leathery looking spandex for the leotard. And while it fit pretty well, I ran into two problems. 1. It was VERY difficult to keep up. It took waaaaay too much hollywood tape to hold up, and even then I constantly felt like I was going to accidentally flash the convention. Problem 2: holding my boobs up. While I inserted the leotard cups with some bra inserts, without an underwire they wouldn't hold me up very well.

My solution? The invisibra. They're backless and strapless, holding on to your boobs using an adhesive on the inside of the cups. Supposedly they can lift and support you, but I had terrible luck with it. It stayed on, but I might as well have been wearing nothing for all it was worth. What a waste of $80. I might as well have bought the $10 Walmart brand.

Still, I think it came out alright. Here's a shot of the leotard without the jacket over it:

But the most important part is the jacket of course. I was forced to use a marine vinyl (aka not meant for jackets) because I couldn't find any garment weight vinyl in blue. Since it is nearly impossible to dye or stain vinyl, I worked with what I had. Go figure, I found some proper leather on sale for only $10 a yard a month after I finished this costume. Sometimes the cosplay gods are full of cruel irony.

Anyway, here are some tips for working with leather that I found really effective:

DO NOT CUT LEATHER WITH YOUR FABRIC SHEARS! There are special, more heavy weight shears made for cutting leather. I suggest getting a pair if you can afford them, because the thick leathr will really eat away at your fabric pair.


A lot of machines can't handle leather. Mine couldn't. I was lucky enough to have an industrial machine at my disposal, but since that's pretty rare, I would test your machine before investing in leather. Nothing worse than spending $20 a yard on something you can't use.

Vinyl can't be ironed. It'll melt. Instead, use a rubber mallet to pound your seams flat, and then glue them open using super glue or rubber cement. Once the glue dries, pound 'em again till they're pretty.

A shot of the jacket and the leotard from the front:

 

And a totally better picture from the side: