Kitty Pryde Casual Cosplay (Self-Drafted) — with Lockheed the dragon backpack!

Time for one of my throwback posts. As in, one of the ones I meant to post ages ago, but just never got around to it. 

This one is for my Kitty Pryde casual cosplay that I made for Comic Con 2019 and also ended up wearing to the intro party at Costume College that year. I self-drafted the dress myself.

Both images above are from marvel.com so you can get an idea of her main outfits.

For those not familiar with her, Kitty Pryde is most known as one of the X-Men, though she was part of many different groups. Her main super power is changing phase so she can slip through walls and other solids. She’s been a favorite of mine because she’s one of the few Jewish female superheroes AND she studied computer science! Her little purple dragon is named Lockheed. You can read more about Kitty here if you’re interested.

Kitty’s had quite a few outfits over the years as she switched teams, but her main ones are variations of the black and yellow. I took inspiration from several different versions after scouring the internet. I liked the red belt for contrast, but I liked the nice V shape the yellow section made on many of her costumes. I chose to bring the yellow all the way down as my interpretation since I was making a skirt variation.

And then I repeated the same motif on the back. The skirt is a full circle with a strip of yellow the same width as the bottom of the V. The black and yellow fabric is scuba from Fabric Wholesale Direct. The red is from a local store and, wow, did it bleed. I washed it at least 5 times and each time both color catchers were solid red (yes, I went through at least 10 color catchers). I knew I couldn’t very well use that fabric for anything I would wear regularly, so I used it for the muslin:

This was one of my first self-drafted items using the moulage from my class with Kenneth King. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out for a first go! As you can see in the picture above, I didn’t properly account for the stretch so I had to pinch out a couple places here and there, mostly around the bust and back.

The other part about this drafting that I was quite proud of was the pockets. I used invisible zippers to make near invisible pockets. The fabric has such body that I knew pockets wouldn’t poof out the sides. Since I was going to be wandering around the convention, I didn’t want to worry about things falling out of my pockets (like room keys or lipstick), so I wanted to be sure it had a zipper and the thick scuba really hides the zipper. So happy with how it turned out and you really can’t tell unless you’re looking close.

Finally, I couldn’t do a Kitty Pryde costume without her Lockheed. In keeping with the theme of not wanting to carry extra stuff around, I made him into a backpack! I used the dragon backpack pattern from Choly Knight and then just picked the details I wanted (i.e., the back spikes, wings and horns — yes, the picture above was taken before I attached the horns, oops). I also purchased the embroidery files for the eyes because I think they really complete it. I love that my version of Lockheed is so cute! It really fit with the short dress version of Kitty. But for real, I would carry this backpack even without the rest of the costume; it’s that cute.

For the fabric, I used some sweatshirt fleece from my stash, but I actually used the inside of the fleece for the main part of the body to give it texture. For the contrast details — horns, spikes, underwings, fingers and toes — I used the right side which gave them a “shinier” look. I put on black straps so it would blend in to my outfit as much as possible. He’s got 2 pockets. The main one accessible from his tummy and a second secret one. The pattern is fantastic. I’ve used other Choly Knight patterns since and very much recommend them.

Finally I styled it with one of my Star of David necklaces since it’s often pointed out that she wore one. For shoes, ideally I would have had some yellow boots, but it was summer in San Diego, so, no. Instead I went with some simple, very comfortable, black Mary Jane style shoes since I was going to be on my feet all day.

In the end, it was perfect to wear in the hot San Diego weather at Comic Con. Not sure how many people actually recognized who I was, but I was thrilled (and comfortable all day!).

I got some extra use out of it for Costume College that year as well:

And to be honest, I think it’s a cute dress outside of the costume purpose! I’d wear it normally. Admittedly, the seams at the waist do rub a bit, so I ended up wearing a tank top under this. If I make it again, I don’t think I’d use scuba. I’d go with something softer. But there she is!