Levi McGarden
Fairy Tail

Inspiration:  I have a special love for Fairy Tail and certain characters from the manga really stuck out to me.  Juvia was my first FT cosplay, but I also loved Levi from the beginning, even though she wasn’t a very important character in the series until later on.  When I saw her second costume with its leggings and arm warmers I knew that was the outfit of hers I wanted to make.  Unfortunately, since the manga was black and white, I had to wait until the anime got to that point to know what the colors were going to be.  They weren’t what I was expecting, but cute none-the-less.

Materials/Construction Details:  This was a rather easy costume and only took me a day or two to complete.  The dress was made out of a cotton knit, which I dyed to the correct orange.  For some reason I wasn’t able to find any knit fabric that was already orange other than some ponte that was safety orange (ew!).  I made the arm warmers out of the same material.  I simply used maroon bias tape for the stripes down the front and back.  I was able to find maroon boots at Good Will and also purchased the tights and headband.  And with that, Levi was done!

Wig:  The wig took a lot of styling and I’m not really satisfied with how it came out.  It’s a scruffy long from cosworx with added wefts on the sides in the front so that I could have those two longer pieces.  The hair behind the headband was teased and sprayed in place to get that wild look she has going on.  Since I’m already eying another costume of hers (waiting for a color version), I’m thinking of looking for a better wig…something with more of a natural wave to it.

Prop: I used my red leather bound collector’s edition of the Lord of the Rings as the book in some of these pictures.  Don’t look too closely or you might see that Levi’s reading about hobbits.