Firefly Cosplay: Mal's Boots

My wonderful geek husband has been encouraging me to get back into my costuming and crafting hobbies for a while now but it is difficult to find the time an energy when I work full time. Fortunately, I have found a project to motivate me! Salt Lake City Comic Con is hosting a Fan Experience event in April and the Alpha Geek and I decided we really ought to dress up since we didn't in August. As Adam Baldwin will be there, we decided we should finally do the Firefly Cosplay we have been thinking about. I will be cosplaying as Kaylee and my geek will be cosplaying Captain Malcolm Reynolds.

I got the Alpha Geek a prop replica of Mal's gun and dog tags from ThinkGeek for his birthday and our anniversary last year and we ordered the coat, pants, shirt, and suspenders from CosplaySky. While I could have made these items myself, it was actually cheaper to order them when you account for material cost. Instead, I decided to focus my creative efforts on Mal's boots. As it turns out, there really is no accurate replica of them anywhere. Motorcowboy has made some decent replicas out of real leather, but they aren't quite right. If you look closely (and troll fan pages) you can see that his boots are actually made using a Steve Madden shoe for the base with leather boot tops added:

Unfortunately, the Steve Madden shoes are no longer being produced so I had to get creative. I got a pair of brown leather Sketcher's shoes from Ross that have ribbing on the toe:

I also got some brown pleather, black adhesive interfacing, and two 14 inch brown zippers from JoAnne's. I traced around a pair of calf high boots I already own on a brown paper bag to make my pattern. 

Based on the image above I did an outer panel and 2 inside panels with seam allowance for the zipper for each boot cover. Then I cut out the pleather and pinned it to the interfacing.

For the elusive ridges on the side I had to get creative again. I cut out strips of cardboard and used fabric glue to attach the cardboard to the wrong side of the pleather like so.











Next, I pinned the adhesive interfacing over the cardboard to sandwich the strips in between. 

Then, I just followed the instructions on the interfacing to adhere the pieces together.

Tadaa!!! Time to start sewing :)





I'll be posting more pictures of the boots as well as the other costume pieces soon!