Bulma's Namek Dress Cosplay Walkthrough
This is way, way past when I intended on posting this, but I got sidetracked by work and generally being lazy.
For FreeCon, I made Bulma's outfit from their time on Namek in DBZ.
Dress
For the dress, I used some yellow sportswear fabric from JoAnn Fabrics and the Simplicity 1609 pattern.
I cut out the pattern a size bigger than I would normally in order to give some bulk to the outfit. Bulma's yellow dress is a bit bulky on her, so I wanted that extra umph to it.
I placed the pattern on my dress form to find out a good length for the dress. Bulma has very little length to the dress, so I didn't want to waste fabric on giving the full dress length and then chopping it all off.
Because Bulma's dress has more shoulder covering than the pattern provides, I extended out the shoulder and gave an almost cap-sleeve look to the dress.
I duplicated the shoulder extensions on the back as well.
I sewed the front and and back together.
Next, I got working on my cutouts.
I used electrical tape to mark out my intended cuts.
From this, I made templates for my black sections.
I used left over black flannel to make the black sections.
I went on to cut out the sections and did a little mini hem.
After that I went to make the center strip/zipper.
It ended up being a 4" x 20ish" strip, which I folded over and stitched to make a tube.
I pinned it to the center of the dress.
Before I attached the center strip, I needed to make a collar.
I cut a 5" x the circumference of the neck on my dress rectangle of the yellow fabric.
I added light weight interfacing to the rectangle to make it stand up. I folded that in half then used a roll of thread to round out the top of the band.
I flipped the fabric inside out and sewed along my markings to give a rounded edge to each side of the collar.
I also removed the last few stitched so the it could lay along the neck of the dress.
I sewed in the black parts.
To make my belt look nice, I made a tube of yellow fabric and threaded the belt through.
Here is about how it looks at this point.
When adding in the back zipper, I did take in the neck a bit so that it didn't gape as much. You can see this in the final pictures below.
Boots
I make the boots I got used some cheap knock off Uggs. In reference pictures I saw, sometimes her boots were orange, sometimes they were red, and sometimes they were brown. So, I punted and went with a color I didn't hate: orangey brown.
To finish the boots off, I used masking tape to tape off sections and then painted them black using fabric paint.
And yes, because I suck, I forgot to take pictures of the finish look. I will get better at this one day.
Wig
For the hair, I got a aqua colored bob wig off Amazon. I saw that quite a few people used it for Bulma outfits.
I cut the bangs and straighten the rest of the wig.
Add a pink headband and that's all you need!
Final look + glasses
I don't have a final picture of me at FreeCon because I totally blanked on it; however, I will make sure to update this post with a complete look once I wear it to another Con.
TTFN!
