Witch Mercy from Overwatch

When Witch Mercy was first released during the Halloween Terror event last year, I along with pretty much everyone else in the Overwatch community, fell in love immediately.

One of my prouder achievements with this project was that it was made using mostly leftover materials from previous cosplay projects. The brown microsuede was what remained from my overestimating with Sigrun Mercy, the yellow knit fabric from my Red, and the black fabric and red knit from a never started cosplay plan from almost 5 years ago!

At the point of debut, this cosplay was not 100% completed (missing some elements like the stockings and her belt accessories), however I had deemed it enough to be passable. I may revisit in the future, assuming other cosplay plans don’t get in the way :)

Materials

• Top (black fabric, brown microsuede, brown lining, yellow knit, matching invisible zipper, gold bias tape, light interfacing, silver trim, gold studs, button)
• Cape (red knit fabric)
• Skirt (brown microsuede, brown lining, yellow knit, matching invisible zipper, light interfacing, Velcro)
• Gloves (black fabric, brown microsuede, brown lining)
• Hat (black cotton, medium weight craft interfacing, matching bias tape, wire, brown microsuede, gold bias tape, silver trim, gold stud)

Top

I’ve never made a bodice pattern before, and now was as good a time as any to try. I followed a tutorial from inthefolds to get the basic block down, and then altered it to include the “tails” on Mercy’s top. As fitted patterns are still a little finicky with me, I made sure to make multiple paper mock-ups, as well as a fabric mock-up, to ensure fit before cutting into my final fabric!

Once I had the paper patterns more or less finalized, came the long and arduous process of piecing together the top. The seams to incorporate the “wing” design on the front were easily the most time and pin consuming part of this cosplay. My underdeveloped quilting/seaming skills came to use as I “patiently” tried joining the fabric together with as little folds as possible.

A lining layer was attached to the backside of the panels to keep the top comfortable despite the multiple seams.

For her cropped jacket, I opted to connect it to the main top (as opposed to having it sit as a layered-on-top jacket).

With all panels of the top completed, they were carefully hand-stitched together. The button details were made using silver trim and gold studs.

The sleeves took a lot of trial-and-error until I got something relatively sleeve-like.

Finally, the collar was drafted and then attached to the top.

With all components completed and attached, a zipper was installed on the back and the top was finished!

Cape

I decided to make the cape a little longer for 2 reasons: 1. Ever since going to my first convention and seeing other cosplayers in capes… I’ve wanted to wear a cape, and 2. I wasn’t planning on making Mercy’s wings ._.

I started with a paper pattern to make sure that the cape design would allow it to drape reasonably, and then transferred it to the fabric.

For ease of wearing, I had the cape attach to the top using a button.

Skirt

The skirt was composed of 2 layers – an under-laying brown panel and an over-laying yellow panel. Both layers were drafted on paper, transferred to fabric, and then patiently stitched together.

An invisible zipper was installed within one of the side seams, and a waistband added to finish out the skirt. Velcro was used for the waistband closure.

Gloves

As I planned to make the gloves using the same brown microsuede I used for the top, I opted for a fingerless glove instead of a traditional glove pattern. The brown microsuede was very prone to fraying and did not look like it would behave well with the small seam allowances in glove fingers.

The gloves were made by first creating a plastic-wrap-and-tape mold of my arm, and sketching out roughly what the glove would look like. The pattern was transferred to paper, and then turned into a brown microsuede version with lining. The gloves ended up loose enough to simply pull on over my arms without the need of any closures.

The arm wings (I’m… not 100% what to call these) were sketched on paper, converted to fabric, and then sewed directly over the seam of the gloves! To keep the gloves in place, I sewed very small hair elastics into both gloves as finger loops.

Hat

I can officially say that I’ve made a hat now.

I followed this tutorial from Sew4Home to get the base hat completed. The hat belt was made using scraps of brown microsuede, as well as some leftover interfaced black cotton from hat construction. The buckle was made from silver trim.

Retrospective

General lessons learned from this time around:

• Piecing Together Seams
  The complicated seams on Mercy’s top were definitely an exercise in patience, and yet another reason why I should get more practice with dealing with more complicated fabric joining.
• Don’t Over-Engineer
  When initially drafting the gloves, I had planned on incorporating an invisible zipper so that the glove could fit more snugly against my arm. After one giant mess, I realized that I could have just as easily made the gloves slightly looser, but pull-on, and still have them look reasonable. If I had just chosen to go with a pull-on option first, it could have saved several hours of painstakingly removing stitches to remove the failed zipper.
• The Hat
  This hat refused to sit still on my head. The wind outside didn’t help much either :C I made the mistake of not doing a test wear of the hat before going to the convention, and suffered as I quickly learned that the clips I hid in the hat were not nearly enough to keep it stable on my head. The fit partially could have been addressed by sizing the hat a bit bigger, but maybe a more evenly balanced arrangement of clips could have anchored the hat more.

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Cosplay patterns created by me!
COSPLAY PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL LEN!