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Costume quandry...

For Halloween this year, the kids have embraced Star Trek.  Amanda is going as a Vulcan (she's dressing as Spock from the reboot movies---no slinky girl-costumes for her!), Luke is going as a pile of Tribbles.  Eleanor wanted to go as Captain Janeway.

I love Captain Janeway.  Almost everything she does makes me happy.  So we could have taken a couple of long sleeved t-shirts and done some creative cutting to make a costume.  However, I thought, "I've always wanted to make a real uniform..."

This is the costume pattern we bought after a short Google search:  Etsy Pattern
The first line of the instructions says that if you are not an experienced costume maker, you should give up and find someone who is.  That may be. 

However, there are actually lots of other people online making costumes as well, and some of them post helpful pictures.  This one shows all the pieces and how they go together: pattern pieces

There are other useful comments over there, I will link some more if necessary.

(Interestingly, everyone who makes this costume (the Kerezman pattern, I think) complains that the directions are too vague.  Some people have written about making a tutorial, but I think that by the time they put together the costume they are done and move on to the next thing.)

I figured out the yoke, and the sleeves seem not too hard (until I have to attach them to the rest of the costume...).  The directions for pieces I and J (the back) seem difficult: I think there is a pleat in there but no mention of this is made in the directions.

This site has more pictures: costume pictures

So that's where I am.  I made a mock up of the yoke and the sleeve.  I'm about to cut out a mock up of the back and see what I can do.  We'll see.  It's just a Halloween costume.  And if I make this one, I think I'm going to get one of these patterns and make it up next:
Bad wolf tutorials  Or maybe this one: roddenberry costume Although they seem awfully short on female costumes...

One of the hazards of having a PhD in math is that I assume that everything else I try in life will be not as difficult, if I can just apply my brain to the problem.  Unfortunately, this is not always true.  For example, gardening is not subject to being conquered merely by thinking.  Nor is viola.  Nor is costume-making, I guess.  But it is definitely fun to be challenged, and learn something new, and maybe failing will be good for me. We always have the two t-shirt option, after all.



 

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