Tutorial: Stargate Atlantis jacket
Gentlemen, behold! arymabeth and I have brought forth cosplay.
This project came in at approx. 60 USD (plus some various shipping fees) for two complete jackets. We both did civilian tan; if you want to make military or admin, find+replace khaki with grey (the velcro is all black).
Shopping List:
$30 - Supplies
Fabric
-Blue cotton, 1 yd
-Yellow cotton, 1 yd
-Khaki cotton, .75 yd
You could easily do this with just .5 or maybe even .25 yards of the colored fabric. The khaki needs to be as close as possible to the material and color your jacket; we managed to get close enough that no dyeing was necessary. Obviously, I had to be science blue and Lizzy had to be medical yellow. I mean, come on.
Thread
- khaki, 1 spool
Pretty self explanatory. Make sure you get the good thread; I didn't, and my damn sewing machine kept chewing it up.
Velcro
-Black, 60 in
-Khaki, 100 in
More (much, much more) about the velcro later. If you can find large squares of the khaki, mazel tov; if not, you're going to have to do it the way we did it.
Appliques
-American flag, 2
You can buy flag patches from the internet with velcro already on, at very reasonable prices. Ours are not; they're not even technically patches, as they came from the appliques aisle of the Hobby Lobby. It worked out cheaper this way, but was a little more work. They only had American flags at the Hobby Lobby, so if you wanted to wear the flag of some country you're not currently in, you probably want the internet. Our patches are also not screen accurate; the outlining is yellow (and very occasionally red) on the show, but the Hobby Lobby only had white.
Zippers
-Black polyester, 2 x 12 in
-Black polyester, 2 x 14 in
You need two zippers for each jacket. The best way to decide is based on your height; Lizzy's 5'4” and needed 12 in. zippers, I'm 5'9” and needed 14 in.
Craft glue
You may need various other implements of destruction, especially a seam ripper (they disappear, like fingernail clippers), a sewing machine and appropriate needles, hand sewing needles, etc. Luckily, my mother and I both sew, and we did this at her house, so life was good.
$15 - Patches
You can get them from MGM, but it's cheaper to go through eBay. I bought ours from Intergalactic, who I highly recommend. I'm a little pissed our $1.99 flag patches have better craftsmanship, but what can you do?
$15 - Jackets
The jackets used on the show are Dickies Eisenhower jackets, which are just way too nice and expensive to go ripping up for cosplay. We got ours on eBay, which I highly recommend; mine is a cotton jacket made by Dockers (men's L), while Lizzy's was a synthetic blend made by some company we'd never heard of (women's S).
The jacket needs to be lined and have slash pockets (teehee) or no pockets at all. If at all possible, and if you've never made clothes before, get a jacket with a nehru collar (aka band collar, aka mandarin collar). I'll go over how to convert a turnover collar to nehru in this tutorial.
Making the Jacket
We, more or less, followed the instructions in this tutorial, which I highly recommend. I have no intention of reinventing the wheel; please consult her for how to actually construct the panels. This tutorial is intended to supplement that one.
I do give the following caveats about her tutorial, though:
1) I did way more machine sewing than she did; I also made the front pockets functional, which was no big whoop. The average sewing machine will power right through velcro; do not be afraid! If you do make the pockets functional, though, a caveat- put on the soft-side velcro first. Just trust me on this.
2) She suggests using the material cut out from the panels to make the pencil pocket. As it turned out, this was a non-option with my jacket (the chest had a decorative seam, making the fabric unusable) and didn't provide nearly enough fabric for Lizzy's (which ended up not having a pocket at all). That's why I suggest getting extra fabric.
3) We didn't fool with dye. Couldn't be buggered.
Jacket Styling
There are at least two styles of jacket in use: the offworld model, which John, Ford, Rodney, and all the non-main characters wear; and what we have come to refer to as the “Sunday Going To Meeting” jacket, which Elizabeth wears when she goes to Olesia in Condemned (and I'm sure a lot of other times, but I couldn't be buggered to look; she also has an offworld-style jacket).
On both jackets, the bottom corner of the panel nearest the zipper starts right at the bottoms of our respective breasts. On the offworld jacket, the bottom of the panel slopes sharply upwards towards the armpit; on the other, it goes straight across. This strategy worked out well for making the individual jackets, but not great when you put them next to each other; my panels look HUGE compared to Lizzy's. But, then, my jacket is huge compared to Lizzy's.
Offworld style. Obvs. it is not even, because my motto is apparently "cut twice, measure occasionally".
Sunday Going To Meeting model
The offworld jacket also has some other details that the other jacket, near as I can tell, lacks. The offworld jacket has a storm flap that runs the length of the zipper; this is very easy to construct. The collars actually extend past the zipper line and velcro on the left side; this was judged to be a massive pain in the ass and was not attempted.
Converting Collars
There are two ways to convert a regular old turnover collar into a nehru collar. If both sides of the collar are the same color, or if the underside of the collar is the same as the jacket, you can do it the easy way. If the underside of the collar is a different color than the jacket (thank you, Dockers), it's more complicated. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of this part, but if you need clarification on the process, I'll see what I can do.
The Easy Way:
Pull the collar out so that it is flat. Locate the edge of the collar. You will see either one or two lines of stitches; pull them both out. There may also be invisible stitches holding the collar together; get your seam ripper in there and pull them. What you should have is two pieces of material, both collar shaped, both still attached to the neck of the garment.
Fold both of these pieces of fabric in towards each other, until they're about the right height (which is usually about as high as the collar came up in the first place). Pin and press into place. Fold together, pin and press. The front of the collar may be an odd shape; fold it inwards and pin it so that it's straight. You should be able to run one line of stitches all the way around, closing it up; it should stand up on its own. Voila! Nehru collar.
And don't accidentally sew the pins into the collar, like I did the first time.
The Hard Way:
Pull the collar out so that it is flat. Locate the edge of the collar. You will see either one or two lines of stitches; pull them both out. There may also be invisible stitches holding the collar together; get your seam ripper in there and pull them. What you should have is two pieces of material, both collar shaped, both still attached to the neck of the garment.
Trim away the fabric that's the wrong color; you'll want to leave yourself at least an inch and a half to work with. What you should be left with is one collar shaped piece of fabric with an unfinished edge. Hem it, using the tiniest little hem you can make (I think mine is about ¼ of an inch or less).
Line up your new hemmed edge with the neck of the jacket, making sure the unwanted color is completely covered. You will have to let it gather at some point; try to make the front as flat as possible. Pin and press. DO NOT SEW YET. Insert your panels before you sew the collar back together, keeping as close to the edge as possible. You may be able to hide the edges of the panels/zips underneath the edge of the collar.
In this picture you can see that a little bit of the green lining is still showing, which I could not, for the life of me, fix.
The Velcro Situation
You can, of course, just glue or sew the patches to your jacket; but then, how will you ever go offworld?
Here's the thing, though: khaki velcro is DAMN hard to find. If you do find it, you will probably only come up with strips, rather than large sheets, and you need a fairly big square to back the Atlantis patch.
If that happens, here's how to deal with it. Note that this section of the tutorial is not screen accurate, but it is consistent with other US military manufactured items which which I am acquainted. Also, nobody who knew where the camera was was home when I was doing this, so please excuse the cell phone pictures.
1. Take the patch. Cut strips of hook side velcro to fit it. You may have to trim it both width and lengthwise. Glue this layer down. Let dry.
2. Lay strips of soft-side velcro across the hook side. Cut to fit.
3. Apply fabric glue. Press a largeish piece of khaki fabric to the glue. Let dry.
4. Remove patch. Fold fabric inwards. Pin and press.
5. Pin to jacket. Sew or glue to jacket; you may want to switch to the zipper foot on your sewing machine. Stitch across the velcro in an X pattern for reinforcement.
6. Go offworld.
If you wanted to make this screen accurate, you could trim the fabric so that none of it showed. However, this would also make it a pain in the ass.
Analysis
Overall, this was a fairly easy project. It took about 10 hours, all told, spread over two days; we managed to avoid hand-stitching all together, which significantly cut down on our time. I strongly, strongly suggest attempting this project with someone else, even if you're only making one. In our case, it took three people: I did the majority of the sewing, the collars, the patch construction, and the piecing of my jacket; Mom saved my life by sewing on the velcro for the patches and constructing the pocket; Lizzy pieced her own jacket, acted as a dressmaker's dummy, and mocked the Hobby Lobby with me.
Bella helped too. You can see more images in this gallery.
Everything came out pretty well; if I had it to do over again, I'd have made the panels on Lizzy's jacket bigger. Otherwise, I approve.
Now, let's go steal shit from other cultures.
This project came in at approx. 60 USD (plus some various shipping fees) for two complete jackets. We both did civilian tan; if you want to make military or admin, find+replace khaki with grey (the velcro is all black).
Shopping List:
$30 - Supplies
Fabric
-Blue cotton, 1 yd
-Yellow cotton, 1 yd
-Khaki cotton, .75 yd
You could easily do this with just .5 or maybe even .25 yards of the colored fabric. The khaki needs to be as close as possible to the material and color your jacket; we managed to get close enough that no dyeing was necessary. Obviously, I had to be science blue and Lizzy had to be medical yellow. I mean, come on.
Thread
- khaki, 1 spool
Pretty self explanatory. Make sure you get the good thread; I didn't, and my damn sewing machine kept chewing it up.
Velcro
-Black, 60 in
-Khaki, 100 in
More (much, much more) about the velcro later. If you can find large squares of the khaki, mazel tov; if not, you're going to have to do it the way we did it.
Appliques
-American flag, 2
You can buy flag patches from the internet with velcro already on, at very reasonable prices. Ours are not; they're not even technically patches, as they came from the appliques aisle of the Hobby Lobby. It worked out cheaper this way, but was a little more work. They only had American flags at the Hobby Lobby, so if you wanted to wear the flag of some country you're not currently in, you probably want the internet. Our patches are also not screen accurate; the outlining is yellow (and very occasionally red) on the show, but the Hobby Lobby only had white.
Zippers
-Black polyester, 2 x 12 in
-Black polyester, 2 x 14 in
You need two zippers for each jacket. The best way to decide is based on your height; Lizzy's 5'4” and needed 12 in. zippers, I'm 5'9” and needed 14 in.
Craft glue
You may need various other implements of destruction, especially a seam ripper (they disappear, like fingernail clippers), a sewing machine and appropriate needles, hand sewing needles, etc. Luckily, my mother and I both sew, and we did this at her house, so life was good.
$15 - Patches
You can get them from MGM, but it's cheaper to go through eBay. I bought ours from Intergalactic, who I highly recommend. I'm a little pissed our $1.99 flag patches have better craftsmanship, but what can you do?
$15 - Jackets
The jackets used on the show are Dickies Eisenhower jackets, which are just way too nice and expensive to go ripping up for cosplay. We got ours on eBay, which I highly recommend; mine is a cotton jacket made by Dockers (men's L), while Lizzy's was a synthetic blend made by some company we'd never heard of (women's S).
The jacket needs to be lined and have slash pockets (teehee) or no pockets at all. If at all possible, and if you've never made clothes before, get a jacket with a nehru collar (aka band collar, aka mandarin collar). I'll go over how to convert a turnover collar to nehru in this tutorial.
Making the Jacket
We, more or less, followed the instructions in this tutorial, which I highly recommend. I have no intention of reinventing the wheel; please consult her for how to actually construct the panels. This tutorial is intended to supplement that one.
I do give the following caveats about her tutorial, though:
1) I did way more machine sewing than she did; I also made the front pockets functional, which was no big whoop. The average sewing machine will power right through velcro; do not be afraid! If you do make the pockets functional, though, a caveat- put on the soft-side velcro first. Just trust me on this.
2) She suggests using the material cut out from the panels to make the pencil pocket. As it turned out, this was a non-option with my jacket (the chest had a decorative seam, making the fabric unusable) and didn't provide nearly enough fabric for Lizzy's (which ended up not having a pocket at all). That's why I suggest getting extra fabric.
3) We didn't fool with dye. Couldn't be buggered.
Jacket Styling
There are at least two styles of jacket in use: the offworld model, which John, Ford, Rodney, and all the non-main characters wear; and what we have come to refer to as the “Sunday Going To Meeting” jacket, which Elizabeth wears when she goes to Olesia in Condemned (and I'm sure a lot of other times, but I couldn't be buggered to look; she also has an offworld-style jacket).
On both jackets, the bottom corner of the panel nearest the zipper starts right at the bottoms of our respective breasts. On the offworld jacket, the bottom of the panel slopes sharply upwards towards the armpit; on the other, it goes straight across. This strategy worked out well for making the individual jackets, but not great when you put them next to each other; my panels look HUGE compared to Lizzy's. But, then, my jacket is huge compared to Lizzy's.
Offworld style. Obvs. it is not even, because my motto is apparently "cut twice, measure occasionally".
Sunday Going To Meeting model
The offworld jacket also has some other details that the other jacket, near as I can tell, lacks. The offworld jacket has a storm flap that runs the length of the zipper; this is very easy to construct. The collars actually extend past the zipper line and velcro on the left side; this was judged to be a massive pain in the ass and was not attempted.
Converting Collars
There are two ways to convert a regular old turnover collar into a nehru collar. If both sides of the collar are the same color, or if the underside of the collar is the same as the jacket, you can do it the easy way. If the underside of the collar is a different color than the jacket (thank you, Dockers), it's more complicated. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of this part, but if you need clarification on the process, I'll see what I can do.
The Easy Way:
Pull the collar out so that it is flat. Locate the edge of the collar. You will see either one or two lines of stitches; pull them both out. There may also be invisible stitches holding the collar together; get your seam ripper in there and pull them. What you should have is two pieces of material, both collar shaped, both still attached to the neck of the garment.
Fold both of these pieces of fabric in towards each other, until they're about the right height (which is usually about as high as the collar came up in the first place). Pin and press into place. Fold together, pin and press. The front of the collar may be an odd shape; fold it inwards and pin it so that it's straight. You should be able to run one line of stitches all the way around, closing it up; it should stand up on its own. Voila! Nehru collar.
And don't accidentally sew the pins into the collar, like I did the first time.
The Hard Way:
Pull the collar out so that it is flat. Locate the edge of the collar. You will see either one or two lines of stitches; pull them both out. There may also be invisible stitches holding the collar together; get your seam ripper in there and pull them. What you should have is two pieces of material, both collar shaped, both still attached to the neck of the garment.
Trim away the fabric that's the wrong color; you'll want to leave yourself at least an inch and a half to work with. What you should be left with is one collar shaped piece of fabric with an unfinished edge. Hem it, using the tiniest little hem you can make (I think mine is about ¼ of an inch or less).
Line up your new hemmed edge with the neck of the jacket, making sure the unwanted color is completely covered. You will have to let it gather at some point; try to make the front as flat as possible. Pin and press. DO NOT SEW YET. Insert your panels before you sew the collar back together, keeping as close to the edge as possible. You may be able to hide the edges of the panels/zips underneath the edge of the collar.
In this picture you can see that a little bit of the green lining is still showing, which I could not, for the life of me, fix.
The Velcro Situation
You can, of course, just glue or sew the patches to your jacket; but then, how will you ever go offworld?
Here's the thing, though: khaki velcro is DAMN hard to find. If you do find it, you will probably only come up with strips, rather than large sheets, and you need a fairly big square to back the Atlantis patch.
If that happens, here's how to deal with it. Note that this section of the tutorial is not screen accurate, but it is consistent with other US military manufactured items which which I am acquainted. Also, nobody who knew where the camera was was home when I was doing this, so please excuse the cell phone pictures.
1. Take the patch. Cut strips of hook side velcro to fit it. You may have to trim it both width and lengthwise. Glue this layer down. Let dry.
2. Lay strips of soft-side velcro across the hook side. Cut to fit.
3. Apply fabric glue. Press a largeish piece of khaki fabric to the glue. Let dry.
4. Remove patch. Fold fabric inwards. Pin and press.
5. Pin to jacket. Sew or glue to jacket; you may want to switch to the zipper foot on your sewing machine. Stitch across the velcro in an X pattern for reinforcement.
6. Go offworld.
If you wanted to make this screen accurate, you could trim the fabric so that none of it showed. However, this would also make it a pain in the ass.
Analysis
Overall, this was a fairly easy project. It took about 10 hours, all told, spread over two days; we managed to avoid hand-stitching all together, which significantly cut down on our time. I strongly, strongly suggest attempting this project with someone else, even if you're only making one. In our case, it took three people: I did the majority of the sewing, the collars, the patch construction, and the piecing of my jacket; Mom saved my life by sewing on the velcro for the patches and constructing the pocket; Lizzy pieced her own jacket, acted as a dressmaker's dummy, and mocked the Hobby Lobby with me.
Bella helped too. You can see more images in this gallery.
Everything came out pretty well; if I had it to do over again, I'd have made the panels on Lizzy's jacket bigger. Otherwise, I approve.
Now, let's go steal shit from other cultures.