Working on my Fifth Doctor costume.
I've been working on my somewhat low-budget Fifth Doctor costume for the past few days. There's been lots of sewing, painting, taping, and quite a few trips to JoAnn Fabrics, but it's definitely been a lot of fun.
Much more below the cut. ;)
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What really got my rear in gear is that my friend will be celebrating his 25th birthday with a Doctor Who themed party at the end of May, and I took that as my cue to finally start work on this costume.
I managed to find a nice white cable-knit sweater vest from seller justinapparel on ebay.
I picked that up and in the mean time managed to find a dress shirt in the right style for $15 on sale at JC Penney's, and swung by the thrift shop. I found a nice pair of linen pants in my size tat draped and moved the way I liked that were brand new with tags, only $5.
So, while waiting for my sweater vest to arrive, I went ahead and ironed out the pants, then started using tape to mask out the stripes for Five's "Peppermint Pants" as my girlfriend calls them.
I then used Tulip brand soft fabric paint from JoAnn's to paint on the stripes.
This paint is really great, it goes on nice and even, doesn't leave brush strokes, and dries very flexible.
These are somewhat baggy, and a little bit long, I'm planning on taking them in for a slimmer fit and hemming the bottoms.
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When my sweater came, I noticed that both the collar striping and waist striping were widely spaced enough so that I could make a decent looking season 21 style, unlike the picture on ebay. So, I paid another trip to JoAnn's and picked up two packages of red 1/2" bias tape and 1/4 yard of black fleece. I then cut out a strip of the fleece and sewed the bias tape along both sides of the strip, creating a three stripe ribbon of sorts, two red stripes with one black in the middle.
Then I cut the ribbon in half and sewed it together in a "V" shape.
I then pinned this down to the collar and sewed it on, the layering of the bias tape, fleece and sweater caused it to be a bit thick for my sewing machine, but with enough care, it went smoothly enough.
Satisfied with my results, I made another three stripe ribbon and repeated the process for the waist stripe.
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With the sweater done, I then turned my sights to the shirt, I made stencils using masking tape for the question marks, which worked for a moderate success. Then I went ahead and masked off each portion that needed to be painted, again using the Tulip brand fabric paint. I removed all of the buttons down the front before painting and sewed them back on using thread I had picked up, knowing I'd need to match the green I was painting on.
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And that's my Fifth Doctor costume so far, I hope to get more work in in the next few days, I ordered a lab coat off of ebay, when it gets here, I'll start work on it right away to make it into my budget Five Frock Coat.
Thanks for reading, and I'm happy to be a part of this great community!
-Luke
