Washington Capitals fan Kora Findler rose to local fame in April when she showed up to a Caps game wearing a Stanley Cup dress. She went viral and deservedly so.

Kora, an accountant by day and a mom/CrossFitter/amateur dressmaker by night, created her costume by attaching a silver corset to a structured skirt. The skirt included every hockey team that’s won the Stanley Cup. Kora also rocked a replica Stanley Cup bowl as a hat. The figurative cherry on top was silver earrings. It was perfect.

Fast forward six months later, Kora became inspired after the Nationals came back from an early-season swoon and made the playoffs.

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A Washington Nationals fan since their inception, Kora has been a big baseball fan all her life.

One of her first dates with her husband was Cal Ripken’s final home game at Camden Yards.

“When the Nationals clinched the Wild Card spot, I told my friends and family that if we win the actual Wild Card game, I’m going to make a new dress resembling a giant World Series Trophy,” Kora said. “Everyone laughed at me.”

Then this happened.

Juan Soto helped drive in three runs in the bottom of the eighth, completing an improbable comeback. Evgeny Kuznetsov did the bird celebration in the stands. The Nationals won the game 4-3 and the World Series dress became destiny.

Finder went to DC area craft stores “more than a couple of times” last week to buy the materials. October 19 she began construction.

“The Stanley Cup dress was less money and simpler materials but a lot more time for the research of all the names of players who have won it,” Kora observed. “The World Series one was so much more involved in terms of the materials.”

Kora began by figuring out the base of the trophy first so that it would be sturdy and not too heavy.

“I used two wreath wire templates for the circle and in-between, I put some floral styrofoam,” Kora said. “The silver and the gold on the base are made out of flashing. To get them to stick, I used professional Velcro and glued it to the foam and stuck it to the aluminum. Foam and aluminum are not materials that glue well.”

The pennants and flagpoles were made with wooden dowels. They were handpainted and attached to the flagpole balls at the top using glue.

The baseball dress is made with the same metallic fabric as the Capitals’ Stanley Cup dress and a hoop cage base skirt.

“I replicated the longitude and latitude lines with ribbon and the stitching with some cording,” Kora said.

The dress is not jinx-y either. Kora hammered this point home to me multiple times. The trophy has the wording 2019 World Series Champions and Presented by the Commissioner of Baseball with Rob Manfred’s facsimile signature. No major league team name is written on the trophy… yet. But Kora hopes she will be able to write Washington Nationals on it soon.

Kora’s four children did not help with the original Stanley Cup dress, but because of the fame and attention that came with the last one, they’ve been all-in on the World Series one.

“My 13-year-old son Sammy, who’s a huge Nationals fan, helped me go buy materials several times,” Kora said. “And each time I had to try the dress on, they helped identify the flaws. They also gave me opinions about what looked good and what looked more realistic. Kids are way more honest than adults.”

To get into the dress, Kora had to hang it up on an overhead light and get underneath. She said it felt like wearing a backpack with wire.

All in all, the World Series dress cost $200 to make, nearly $150 more than the Stanley Cup costume.

“I probably spent $30 on glue alone for this one,” Kora said.

Kora will be debuting the World Series dress at Nationals Park on Saturday. She has standing room only tickets because “I can’t sit in this thing!”

The Nats will look to bounce back from their Game Three loss and try to take a controlling 3-1 lead in the championship series. Kora said she will take photos with fans who run into her wearing the dress. But the attention is not why she makes these stunning contraptions.

“I express my excitement by creating things,” Kora said.

“It’s my love for the team as a fan.”