Oops! Apparently I've accidentally deleted all of my images. I'll see about fixing that soon.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Dr Who (5th) Cosplay: The Shirt

As I posted about last week, I'm working on Dr Who cosplay for this year's GenCon.  The first piece I started working on was the shirt.  Peter Davidson's 'Doctor' is supposed to be wearing a modified version of a cricket outfit.  This means a white shirt.  Knowing that my time and resources are limited between now and August I decided to start with a pre-owned shirt from one of the local thrift shops

Thrift store shirt

I found a shirt that fit right in the collar and still looked in good condition otherwise.  Then I chopped off the sleeves, cut the armscyes in a bit, and cut off the side seams.

sleeves removed, sides reshaped

If you recall from the first post, I've planned to make the jacket sleeveless and the sweater is short sleeved, so I wanted a shirt that would be almost racerback so that really the only part that is showing is the collar and the button-up front.
 
new side seams (french seams)

After reshaping the sides and armscyes I finished the side seams with narrow french seams and used the fabric from the (now removed) sleeves to make bias strips with which to finish the armscyes.

New Armscyes (L-inside, R-outside)

Since this is going to be worn underneath my corset, I wanted a little bit more snug of a fit.  I had been wanting to experiment with elastic shirring for a while and this was the perfect opportunity.
 
winding elastic thread onto bobbin

I found some info on the web once that said that you should absolutely always wind the elastic onto your bobbin by hand, so I did.  I also lengthened my stitches.

shirring snugs up the fit

I didn't mark or measure anything out, so it's all very rough with not-totally-parallel lines of stitching and those lines a variety of widths apart, but it produces the effect I was hoping for.

The last important thing to do to the shirt was to add the signature Dr Who question marks to the collar of the shirt.  

testing out sewing machine embroidery

I had purchased both orange thread and orange embroidery thread.  Honestly I should have just done the embroidery by hand.  I think it would have turned out much cleaner.  But it was late and we all know that good sewing decisions are never made after midnight...

it'll do

As it is, after much seam ripping and re-stitching, they look ok, even though I managed to make one of them backward.  By the time I was finished I was too tired to care, so that is how it will remain.

In the next Dr Who cosplay post we will take a look at getting the jacket started.

Hope your week is a good one!

4 comments:

  1. This is looking really cool, I am excited to see your jacket.

    ReplyDelete
  2. As you are one of my favourite bloggers, I have given you a blog award. I hope you will accept.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I meant to add pop over to claim it. and your question marks are cool.

    ReplyDelete

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