TARDIS Bridesmaid Gown

Regina came to me a few months ago with a challenge. She will be a bridesmaid at a Dr. Who theme wedding and she needs help creating her attire: a deep-blue long gown with a white Victorian-inspired bolero. Essentially, she wanted to be a TARDIS incarnated as a bridesmaid. Challenge accepted.

She gave me this photo reference for the gown.

The bride had given Regina the material for her dress; I would sew her gown from scratch. She wanted to look for the white blouse that I can just renovate into the bolero she imagines, so she went all around town until she found a long-sleeved ruffled piece.

Incorporating Regina’s ideas with the online images of Victorian boleros, I mocked-up this design for her approval.

With all elements agreed on, I went to work. Figuring out the bias skirt for her gown was a bit tricky because even after I did all the math, my pattern still came out wrong. Luckily, there was enough material to absorb the standard 10% error margin.

Same goes with the bolero. Good thing I had enough white voile in my fabric stash to cover for the wrap-around and wrist ruffles.

For this project, I had to fire up my serger machine for the ruffles and edge overlocks. It was an essential tool for the ruffling and the hemming of the spandex gown.

Here’s the gown and bolero ready for the fitting. [Another vital tool in use here is the adjustable body form. I set it to Regina’s measurements. I won’t be able to complete these sewing projects without it. So yes, I need an adjustable male body form.]

The biggest challenge for me was the pair of “window” patches on the bolero. Because I had given up my embroidery machine in a previous life, I had to figure out how to make it using either my regular sewing machine (the zigzag feature) or the serger (the rolled hem feature). I used up so much thread and practice cloth but finally succeeded in zigzagging the window panes and hand-sewing them onto the blouse.

To complete Regina’s TARDIS persona, I made these jewelry accessories for her: the pilot light earrings (come back for a blog post on how I did those), the "police box" bangle, and the door sign pendant necklace. She liked them.

And here is our gorgeous bridesmaid at the church... 

... and at the wedding reception (with her doppelganger). Achievement unlocked.

Captain John Hart Costume Project

Oneal is back with another costuming project for me. He is attending a Dr. Who theme wedding and wants to go as Captain John Hart from the spinoff “Torchwood.”

I asked, “Who?”

He said, “Yes.”

I asked again, “Captain Who?”

He said, “No, Dr. Who. Captain John Hart.”

Before I could open my mouth again, he showed me the online photos of Captain John Hart. He said that’s the jacket he wants to wear to the wedding. 

Oneal said he will look for a jacket of the same color and texture and I can just convert it. Add the braid and buttons accessories, and adjust the collar and sleeves.

Easy as pie. If he can bring me the jacket (so I won’t have to make one from scratch), I’ll do the required renovations.

The search for the jacket took a few weekend trips to where jackets are sold. Remotely, he consulted with me on the options he found.

One had black sleeves, one looked like salmon, one looked like eggplant. We agreed on the maroon corduroy. I could make it work.

Next was the search for the braid material, or technically, the soutache. And the brass buttons. After total fails at several sewing stores, he landed at Carolina’s where they had these fancy options:

  

Since it was going to be a wedding anyway, we agreed to use the white one with the silver trim (but without glitter or crystals). Here’s our messaging about the soutache and buttons.

He ended up buying a whole roll of the soutache (60+ feet) and the store's entire stash of gold buttons (a dozen more than we needed).

With all the materials available, I went to work. Digging through the sewing accessories I hauled from the US, I determined that the best way to work with the soutache is with a sticky stabilizer and fusing tape. Keeping an eye on the reference photo, I estimated the size and shape of the area the soutache will cover and cut a paper pattern.

This part required a lot of patience but the result was remarkable!

The next step was to sew the soutache onto the jacket. Two straight lines for now, just to hold the panel in place. Final stitching will be done after the fitting.

Oneal went searching again, this time for dark blue corduroy material that I will use for the sleeves and collar. But his search was a bust, so I said, “How about I use a blue microfiber that I have in my fabric stash? I will show you.”

This was the jacket Oneal tried for a final fitting. Just a few buttons, and pins all over the place.

The jacket passed the fitting.

Achievement unlocked!

Here’s Oneal at the wedding, with his wife wearing the project in my next blog entry.