Sheila the She Wolf was a completely late minute addition to my DragonCon 2017 line up, but what a great addition she was! I literally made this costume in a single morning the Sunday before we left for con. I had just finished binge watching GLOW, I knew a good friend of mine was working on a Zoya the Destroya, and I just felt like I didn’t have enough walking around/partying outfits for con.
Sheila’s outfit is actually really simple because it’s not too form fitted, it’s meant to look disheveled (no nice seams and hems needed!) and it’s belted. Belted costumes are the best because you can easily get a good fit without a lot of tailoring. I couldn’t find a lot of reference images through google image search, so I spent a lot of time pausing the show. It was nearly impossible to get it paused in such a way that I could clearly see her back, so I had to do some guess work, but it appeared that the fur ended just past the sides, and that it was attached to a black bodysuit, or had a black bodysuit underneath, such that you saw the black at the back. It also seemed to have criss-crossing tails across the back. I might be imagining that part, if I ever find better pictures I may have to modify it.
The top is made from two kinds of faux fur and stretch faux leather. I just sort of draped the fabric on my dress form and started cutting. I cut one piece for the front, and two pieces for the sides and sewed those together. Then I cut a piece of the stretch faux leather for the back, and pinned everything together, adjusting until I liked the fit, then sewed it up. I left lots of jagged edges on purpose, and attached lots of stringy fur bits hanging down. I made loose straps and the criss-cross back ties using the two kinds of faux fur. That’s really all there was to it.
I made the belt out of two pieces. The first was a length of the stretch black faux-leather, ends sewed together with a bit of overlap to make it look like it was wrapped around. The second was about 8 sections of thick cord, with the ends sewed to some webbing and a parachute clip so I could put it on and off. I sprayed it partially with black spray paint to weather it.
I wore a black bathing suit underneath and switched out the straps for clear ones. Added in a garter belt, some torn stockings, and heavy black boots. Boom, 2 hour costume 🙂 You can also throw on black pants for her non-wrestling outfit if you don’t feel like showing that much cheek (as I did when we went to a restaurant) or if it’s chilly.
For my hair I used two velcro rollers to make the big tufts at the front, and then just messed it up a bit, and pulled the ends of a few curls down at the front. I didn’t want to go for faux-dreads, that’s too much damage to my hair for a single weekend.
I was SOOO happy with this costume, the return on investment was absolutely the highest of anything I’ve ever made. I wore it three separate nights because it was just so comfy and easy to run around and dance it. Ran in to a handful of other GLOW cosplayers too, wonderful ladies!
