Saturday 19 December 2009

Happy Christmas to all my readers!




You may have noticed that I recently added some hit counters to my sites, and I have been amazed as to how many readers I have out there!
When I started out I was writing it mainly for myself and one or two friends who knew I was about to make a new, and possibly ultimate, Tennant Coat.
From there my blogs have grown, and I never really knew how many cosplay enthusiasts were bothering to look.

Well, now I know it is more than just a few, I want to thank you all for taking the time to follow what I have been up to this year, and hope you will continue to see where I go in 2010.

I have pretty much written the last entry for 2009 (don’t worry, I’ll be back in January fired-up with ideas!) so all that remains now is to wish everyone a Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year!
I wish to especially thank a few people for
their support this past year: 


Ramie for showing faith in my work

Lisa for aiding the breakthrough with the GAP trousers

Timelord25 for his faith in me to make him a new Five Coat

Seth for his invaluable input and eye for detail, giving me something to live up to

Finally Primrodo for being a sounding board for ideas and direction, and for the use of the image of his TARDIS,
which appears above

Monday 14 December 2009

Bonhams costume sale -
16th December 2009

This coming week there is another auction at Bonhams in Knightsbridge of Film and Entertainment memorabilia.
Amongst the James Bond and Beatles items (and Laurence Oliver’s costume from Richard III) are a number of original Doctor Who costumes.

There is small batch of further items form the Angels costumes archives, containing a couple of Doctor Who lots.

The, after a number of film posters and other memorabilia, there are six more Doctor Who lots, though this time not directly from Angels.
Star items amongst them is a full Tetrap costume from Time and The Rani.
Also on sale is a set of rehearsal scripts form Robots Of Death, which went unsold at the Bonham’s Auction on 16th June 2009, so anther chance to grab them if you meant to bid last time around.

The viewing is Sunday 13th and Monday 14th June, so I went on Monday and took some more detailed pictures, particularly of the Tetrap costumes.

In the meantime, below is a full list of the items on offer, taken from the online catalogue so they can be seen all together and long after the listing on Bonhams will have been removed.


I have separated the items by Doctor era, and you can see the rest of the items here:
Here are just the lots relating to the Fifth Doctor era


Lot 165A
Dr. Who: a Time Lord robe, the V-neck surplice-style garment woven in pale brown and black diamond pattern, tape ties to sides, with label inscribed FUT 488.


Footnote:
Purchased from the Longleat auction in the early 1990s, this is believed to have been used in the Tom Baker story, The Deadly Assassin, transmitted October/November 1976 and Ark Of Infinity, with Peter Davison, shown January 1983.


Estimate: £500 - 600

Sold £420

Saturday 24 October 2009

The Five Doctors

No, the title of the posting is not a reference to the classic 20th Anniversary special from 1983, but to collectively the Third, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Tenth Doctors!



Confused?

Well, I have been having a lot of fun recently, slowly expanding the costume pieces I do.
To start with, they all appeared together in the original Tennant Coat or Tennant Suit blogs, but I have since started building separate blogs to cover the costumes of each Doctor, so they are easier to find and digest.

So far I have added the blog you are reading to cover the Five Trousers and Five Coat I have been working on.
I also added a blog for the Sixth Doctor, to pull out the information about making my Six Trousers.


This past week I have added the Seventh Doctor blog as I have been working on a replica of the Hanky that goes around his hat (see left).

Now I am adding the Third Doctor to the portfolio! This is because I am starting working on making the Inverness Cape he is often seen wearing.
I am doing it as part of the college course I am currently on.

So start checking out my other blogs as I slowly add to them.

Sunday 11 October 2009

Analyzing the Five Doctor costume

Having now done Five Trousers, and being far into doing the Five Coat, it feels like I have done over half a full Davison costume, though there are a number of items to go to make it truly complete.

This got me thinking to write a list of the main costume items worn – though I cannot come close to Bob Mitsch’s excellent Five Breakdown, which is pretty damned definitive.

The list, though relatively short, is slightly complicated by the refresh the costume received for the 21st season. At first glance there is little difference, but when you look closer, not much didn’t change.
The two photographs below are a good comparison between the Season 19 (left) and Season 21 (right) versions.


When the original costume was made back in 1982, several shirts and pairs of trousers would have been made, allowing for spares being cleaned or repaired as well as for stunt doubles. These were used throughout Davison’s first two seasons.
When it came to season 21 in 1984, the wardrobe department completely refreshed The Doctor’s costume, trying (but failing) to match the original version.

Thursday 8 October 2009

Back to the Academy

I am so pleased I have finally cracked all the problems I was having with the calico test of the Five Coat.
Having said that, it has been a long journey and for a while I was going round in circles making slower progress than I would have liked – and using more calico and pattern paper than was reasonable.
I need to do something about this, and it needs a little thinking outside of the (police) box, so to speak.

My solution? Well, I have given it some thought and I think although I can pick up new skills quickly by study professionally made garments, because I am self-taught, there are probably short-cuts and simple tricks I could use if I had some structured training.

I have looked around and found that a local college network runs courses in dressmaking and tailoring to a variety of skill levels. It is not long before courses start and enrolment is very soon, so I a few weeks back I made some enquires and got myself along to West Herts College in Hemel Hempsted to sign up.

Because I have worked in my own little bubble with no contact with others, I truly do not know my skill level.
I am certainly above the ‘beginners’ level, but am I ‘intermediate’ or “advanced’? Which would I get the most from? I don’t want to be on a course that teaches me how to thread a needle; likewise I don’t want to be lost trying to learn couture fashion with corsetry as a speciality!

As it turned out, both the beginners and intermediate courses were full, and had been for some time as they are constantly over subscribed to, leaving me just the advanced as an option. After telling the tutor about the commissions I had been taking on recently, she was perfectly happy to accept me for the course and thought the others would have been too basic for me anyway, which is sorta good to hear.

Tuesday 6 October 2009

Five Coat - Finished calico test

I am not ashamed to say I am a little pooped after finishing the calico test for the Five Coat, but it’s been worthwhile I think.
Click to enlarge picture

After sharing a ‘photo-shoot’ image earlier, here are some more detailed pictures of the finished test.

Five Coat - Lining, then its DONE!

I have now successfully finished work on the body of the coat, and have nailed the pattern for its visible parts (see right).

I now need to sort out the parts hidden from view – the lining.

Compared to doing a Tennant Coat, which required its lining to be installed during pretty much the first few stitches, this will be much easier. The pattern for the lining is with little exception a straight repeat of the outer part of the coat, so I won’t go into too much detail about it at this stage.

The only panels that are different are the inside fronts, which omit the area covered by the lapels and also have the internal pockets set in them. It is this part of the lining I will focus on here.

I have again cribbed the shape of the inside front linings from my charity-bought jacket, cutting it off horizontally at the waist level to match how the Five Coat is constructed (see left, top).

The charity jacket had an internal pocket on each side, so I mark and replicate the angle and position for my Five Coat, based on what I have extracted from the dissected jacket.

Thursday 1 October 2009

Five Coat - Working on the collar


Now that I have sorted out how I will do the inside pockets, my attention turns to the collar and lapels.

The charity-bought jacket I dissected helped me get a much better shape and fit to the fronts.
My plan now is to crib the shape and cut of the lapels, though the collar does not have the correct shape, so I will need to adjust for that (see above, noting the angle of the collar coming away from the notch).

The lapels and collar I am using as a template are, like the fronts of the jacket I did earlier, from a more tailored school and a little different to the method I am used to. I think it is high time learnt some new techniques, so I aim to follow what I find.

The main difference is the underside of the collar, which is made from a thick felt rather than the same fabric as the body of the jacket.

I am working on the basis that this is applied last, so I look first at the structure of the upper collar. This is made in two parts, which at joined at a seam just below where the collar will roll. To create the shape of the collar, the two parts are curved in diverging directions (see right). You could be forgiven to think I have put the lower part upside down, but this IS the way they go together.

I replicated the collar, adjusting the shaping needed as I go, and sew it to the lapel fronts as I would usually do.

Friday 25 September 2009

Five Coat - The Time Lord’s Pockets


Things are going well with the Five Coat!
So now that I am at last on a roll, its time to tackle the inside pockets.


Doing welts in a heavy woven material such as wool, or even better the Malabar or Alcantara my Tennant Coats were made from, has been quite easy for me as they are quite sturdy and self-supporting. As a result I had the chance to perfect my technique over the numerous coats I had made (see right).
You can read about all that in the Tennant Coat blog, under Inside pockets - smoke and mirrors

Wednesday 23 September 2009

Five Coat - Starting the final calico test

Having sorted out a number of problems I was having with the pattern for the Five Coat, I can now begin what will be the last calico test before making it for real.

I quickly breeze my way though assembling the back of the coat (see right), having done it several times now and nailed the pattern a couple of goes back. The fronts I am using are now to the revised design having cribbed it from the charity shop jacket last week.

I have salvaged the piped pocket flaps I did for the last version, and set them in place (see left).

The pocket bag is made in two flat halves, one of which is sewn behind the flap. The front half of the pocket bag is then sewn to the top of the skirt, and the two parts are then sewn together when the skirt is joined to the body of the coat, taking a detour around the pocket bag to create the opening.

Sunday 20 September 2009

Five Coat - Calico progress

I have been working on the Five Coat on and off for a few weeks now, having taken a number of breaks to clear some garment commissions.

I recently had my first go at some of the piping on the coat, doing one of the pocket flaps as a test.

I simply pinned the piping around the flap and hand stitched it in place, finding it a lot easier that I had dreaded! (see above)

I also had a go at piping the sleeve, though in a different way this time. First I made my sleeve as usual, but only sewed the shorter front seam together. I then worked out the level of the piping and lightly marked a pencil line on the calico. I then machine stitched the bottom edge of the piping to the sleeve, which worked very well (see below left).

So the piping would match the lapel and pocket flap edges, I then folded it in half (see above middle) and stitched the other side down too (see above right).


When the back seam was sewn, the piping lined up and the join was on the back of the sleeve out of sight (see right).

All this was certainly easier than I had feared, but now I had broken the ice with piping, I had to face up to another little problem I had been putting off.

Each time I have returned to the coat I have progressed it a little further, but I have equally been finding issues and problems with the pattern I was developing.

Sunday 6 September 2009

Regeneration

“It’s the end, but the moment has been prepared for . . .”

It’s by no means the end - but it is the beginning of a new chapter.
Just as Tom Baker regenerated into Peter Davison, so I now begin a new spin-off from my existing Tenannt Coat and Tennant Suit blogs.

What started out as just a way of practicing making trousers before cutting my precious JoAnn fabric has become a bit more than that.

The Five Trousers I made have now been commissioned by a number of very satisfied customers, and I now offer a choice of screen accurate fabrics to cover all of Peter Davison’s tenure as The Doctor, including the rarely done season 21 trousers
(see right).

I have been encouraged by their sucess, and have been ased to produce some further items if Five Costumes, with some secretly in the pipeline.
With what I know is coming up, I think it warrants its own dedicated blog.

In here I will cover all things Five and you will find I have already migrated the entries relating to Five Costuming from my original blogs so they are now all in one place.

This will then keep the Tennant Coat and Tennant Suit blogs concentrating on what they were intended for - all things Tennant!

As my repertoire expands I will bring other blogs online to cover those costumes.

Watch this space . . .

Saturday 1 August 2009

Five Coat - calico pattern testing

First thing I need to do is check that what I have transcribed from the Buckaroo pattern is sizing up correctly. It is also good to have a dry run to understand how the coat will go together and iron out any problems I may encounter.

Time to do another trusty calico test!
I must admit that when I first started making Tennant Coats, I was so desperate to have the finished result there and then, I would storm in and design on the fly as I was cutting final fabric and correct for any inaccuracies as I went along. I always knew calico tests were what I should be doing to start with, but it was only when I was getting ready to cut the £75 a metre Alcantara, that I stopped myself and went down the calico route first.
I found it very useful and it encouraged me to transcribe a proper pattern which I then have if I want to make another. I would now never do a coat any other way.

So, for the Five Coat I quickly cut the pieces that form the body of the coat, as well as one of the outside pockets as I want to get to grips with this unusual method I am not familiar with.

Version One
It was easy to follow how to put it together and within an hour I had a wearable shape I could test. There were immediately a number of issues I could see with the pattern that would need to be fixed: the fiddle-back was pushing the buttons too far apart (see below, top left); the underarm area was not as fitted as I would like (see below, top right); the seam on the shoulders was angled backwards more than I would like (see below, bottom left); the skirt was not as full as it should be; and the pocket flaps were too small (see below, bottom right).


Wednesday 29 July 2009

Suits you, Sir

Recently I have had a number of enquires about the trousers I have been making based on the classic series costumes. I have therefore decided to make them available for commission.

If you are interested, please get in touch by emailing me at tennantcoat@me.com.

Five Trousers - season 19 design

Screen accurate copy of trousers as worn by Peter Davison in his first two seasons.
Fabric is bespoke printed by Spoonflower and has been designed to accurately match genuine garment. Although never seen in full on screen, pattern has been based as closely as possible to the trousers as seen in Planet Of Fire.


Trousers have high V-split back; zip and hook & eye fastenings; two side pockets; buttons ready for braces (braces not supplied!); lined from waistband to pockets.

£350
Five Trousers - season 21 design

Made to a pattern to match the trousers seen in Planet of Fire, these trousers are made with a fabric design not previously made available. This design of trouser was also seen recently in Time Crash, where Peter Davison wore the pair that had been let out for Colin Baker during the regeneration scene in Caves Of Androzani.














Trousers have high V-split back; zip and hook & eye fastenings; two side pockets; buttons ready for braces (braces not supplied!); lined from waistband to pockets.

£350
Six Trousers - season 22 design

Made from authentic woven pillow ticking and dyed to just the right colour as described in Making Phoenix Fabric.
NB: trousers shown are made directly from the California Pants pattern and are not strictly screen accurate. Trousers made will be to a revised screen accurate pattern.

Trousers have zip and hook & eye fastening; two side and two back pockets; buttons ready for braces (braces not supplied!); lined from waistband to pockets.

£300

Friday 24 July 2009

A Ten Coat divided by Two

I have been a bit fired up recently while making all the Six Trousers and Five Trousers I have been doing recently.


They all started out as practice runs before making the Ten Suit Trousers, but I have ended up with half a wardrobe of some of the earlier Doctors.

So I have decided to have a go at making a Five Coat to go with my trousers. After all the work I have done on the Ten Coat, making a Five Coat should be a lot easier as there is much less to it. The only part I am daunted about before hand is the red piping as that will undoubtably have to be sewn by hand, but I am sure once I get to it and start knuckling down, it won’t be as bad as I thought.

Looking back, I have always wanted a Five Coat, right from when Peter Davison was playing the part in 1982. I suppose it was the first item of cosplay I ever wanted, though at the time I’m sure it wasn’t called cosplay.
I was quite taken with the simple style of the coat and I tried to find something similar without success.

Wednesday 8 July 2009

Designer label

When I did my Five Trousers recently, I ordered the fabric from Spoonflower, who can print any design you can come up with onto material.
When my order arrived it was neatly wrapped in tissue paper with a compliment slip that was the Spoonflower logo, but it was printed onto fabric! Which I thought was kinda cool touch (see right).

It seemed such a waste to just throw it away, I thought the the best way to use it was to use it as a clothing label in my trousers, as a little reminder of where the fabric had come from.

I didn’t want to hide it away at the back of the trousers (I was also worried it may get worn), so I put it in the front to one side of the fly, sewn into the curtain (see left).

And having done that I got to thinking that maybe I should have a label too!

I did an internet hunt and found a company called Able Labels who can do fabric clothing labels in short runs (most wanted 1,000 plus) at not too bad a price. I designed it in photoshop and kept it to a single black and white design to bring it in on a budget. I sent them a test jpeg which they wove for me and the result was pretty good!

I ordered their minimum run and put the first label in the back of the Five Trousers and it just looked so right! (see right).

If I get anymore commissions for Five Trousers I can put the labels in and make it look a bit more professional.

Finally here is a better close-up of the finished label.

Sunday 5 July 2009

Making My Five Trousers


Now I have got my Five Trouser pattern sorted out, with its high conjoined waistband, I can set about making the real thing.

I ordered two yards of the Spoonflower printed fabric, and I quickly discovered that it was only just enough to make the trousers.

Cutting

I want to get the fall of the stripes just right, so I found some decent reference pictures and had them on hand while I was cutting the cloth (see below).

This particular picture (see left) was helpful in working out the scale, as I could count the stripes between pocket edges and work it so they would fit to the width of the trousers I was planning to make.

For the fronts I noticed how the wider stripe cluster runs up the front fly, so I position the pattern so it falls in the appropriate place.

Tuesday 23 June 2009

Six plus Ten equals Five

I am slowly working towards making my trousers for my suit, and gaining experience at each stage.
I have come up with a game plan to get me to the Tennant Trousers I need to make:

STAGE ONE - done
The Six Trousers were an exercise in following a commercial pattern and so I learnt the basic techniques, having never made any before. The cut was very loose, so quite forgiving if I got it a little wrong. I did a button fly, as I am a dab-hand at buttonholes and didn’t want to get distracted at this stage with learning how to set a zip.

STAGE TWO - done
The GAP Trousers I bought and have deconstructed have given me the definitive pattern I need to work to. I have copied the pattern and studied how they go together, thought I need practice setting a zip fly.



STAGE THREE - current project
The Five Trousers need to follow the same pattern as the Six Trousers, although the legs need to be more tailored, like the GAP straight-cut. I will therefore use the top part of the Six trousers, and blend them into the legs of the GAP pattern.


STAGE FOUR - the final goal
Tennant Trousers. Once I have completed all the above I will be skilled and ready to make the real deal, working to the pattern of the GAP straight-cut trousers I bought, using the Jo-Ann fabric.




So, I am now at stage three, having done my Six Trousers and cribbed a pattern from the GAP trousers I recently bought.

Since the Five Trosuers need to be a slimmer fit, I quickly realised that I could use the fronts and back I have cut from the GAP trousers with no adaption as such, and attach the waist band from the Laughing Moon Mercantile pattern to create the result I want.

As usual, first up is to make a calico test, which now I have done some trousers, I can make quite quickly (see left).

I used the vertical entry pocket design as the GAP trousers; set my first zip; and used some professional quality hook and bar fastening for the waistband.

I shan’t go into to much detail at this stage about there construction, as seeing it made in calico is a bit dull, besides, after making them I spotted an integral error with the design as a result of me making a rather big assumption!

Although I knew the Five trousers were high waisted with a V-split back (just like the Laughing Moon Trousers) I took it that I could use the pattern as is. However, when I looked at scenes from Planet Of Fire (the only story I know of where he does not wear the cricking jumper) I noticed the V was a lot higher than the pattern. Furthermore I noticed that there was no attached waistband, so the legs of the trousers went all the way to the top of the waist (see below).

I therefore recut the pattern with the waist band added to the top of the GAP trouser legs, and with the accentuated back V.

Here is a comparison of the different patterns side-by-side with in each case the back on the left and the fronts on the right.

Six Trousers

Notice that the crotch on the back is quite shallow and does not hook around like the Ten and Five patterns.
A small V dart above the back pocket gives the seat shape.
The pattern also has an allowance for extra fabric on the seat (beyond the vertical line on the far left on the backs) which gives the option later of letting them out if needed (read: when you get fatter).


Ten Trousers (from GAP Straight Cut)

The back crotch is more accentuated and curves back down into the straight leg.
Again, a small V dart above the back pocket give the seat shape.
Being an off the peg size, there is no allowance for letting the seat out at a later stage.

Five Trousers

These have the leg and basic shape cribbed from the GAP trousers (look at the shape around and below the crotch point) but I have added the high waistband to the top (notice the distance from crotch to waist top is much greater).
The fitting dart on the back is diamond rather than V-shaped to give a good fit. It is surprising how much influence this tiny piece of shaping has on the final fit.

Just to check all was working as planned, I made up another quick test, this time in the Interior Mall fabric I originally got to make the Six Trousers. Interior Mall had sent the wrong colourway, so I could not use the material, besides the design was really not quite right.
I used this because it is striped and would show up how the fit and shaping was working (see below). All I made up was the fronts and back, with no pockets or fly.

They fitted just right and the high back worked well.

Adding this to the pattern, and forgoing the attached waistband, threw up some unexpected problems, and it dawned on me how important the seam at the bottom of the waistband actually is.
It is to this seam the tops of the pockets are attached and hang from; this seam also secures the top couple of inches of the trousers, making it a stronger area for the braces buttons to be attached, otherwise the insides of the trousers would get pulled inside out; this seam is also where the zip tidily finishes and the buttoning above the zip are located. I was now having to work without the convenience of this. It appears a minor thing, but it has an important knock on effect.

When I studied the trousers closer, I noticed there was a single line of stitch where the lower seam of the waistband would be. This would be my (and had been the costume designer’s) get out option: I could have a single line of top-stitching onto which I could hang and attach all I needed.

With the pattern for the Five trousers finalised, all I have to do is make them up.

Saturday 13 June 2009

Spoonflower

Spoonflower.com is a great little website!

In a nutshell it gives you the ability to have printed bespoke fabric to your own design, and then order as little of as much as you need.
Whereas most fabric manufactures require exorbitant set-up fees and minimum runs enough to cloth an army, Spoonflower has none of this (assuming you can design and create your own patterns), and the cost of fabric really isn’t that much, considering.

Spoonflower are based in a former sock mill in downtown Mebane, North Carolina USA and were formed in early 2008 by Stephen & Kim Fraser, who spotted a gap in the market for bespoke fabric printing.

Luckily Stephen (a self-confessed internet geek) used to be the marketing guy for another North Carolina company called lulu.com, who were doing print-on-demand book publishing. It wasn’t a massive leap to move to print-on-demand fabrics, and before long they were up and running.
Spoonflower, in case you wondered, is an endangered plant native to North Carolina that grows around the edges of bogs.
Kim built a rain garden (read bog) in their backyard. While researching the names of bog plants for the garden, they came across Spoonflower and liked it enough to buy the domain.

Stephen is continually amazed by the uses for the fabrics users design, “People use the fabric to make clothes, quilts, bags, and other things that you might expect, but they also use it to make buttons, dolls, cloth-books, and all kinds of other things that we had not thought of before we started the business. The dolls are my favorites. There’s one guy in Wilmington, John Golden, who makes stuffed robot dolls. They’re great.”

Now, I had heard mixed reviews of the results from Spoonflower, so I approched it carefully with eyes open, but personally I have found it to be very good at all stages – no complaints from me, and I found it very easy to set-up and use.

First you need to create an account: the usual stuff with a username and password.

From there you upload your design as a TIFF, JPEG, PNG or GIF – so basically anything you can create or convert to Photoshop is usable. There is an online design tool, but I am very competent in Photoshop, so I will stick to what I know.

Then you simply choose the design you want to print and select from a range of sizes of fabric in a choice of two fabric weights; a Quilting weight, which is 4oz per yard; or a heavier Upholstery weight, which is 10oz per yard.

A quick 8 inch square swatch is US$5, and is well worth getting to check that your design’s colour is coming out as you would like. I recently did a swatch (see below) where I crammed on a load of tests I wanted to do, to varying success, and got them printed together to save costs.

Once you have received that, or are feeling confident, you can order between one and three yards at a time, which is about enough for the average project.
There is no specific minimum order, but a quarter yard is the shortest you can order.

In the pursuit of perfection, it is easy to spend inordinate amounts of time searching for a match for a screen-used material and ultimately not find it.

A case in point is the blue pinstripe Tennant suit material.
As part of the costume display at the recent Earl’s Court exhibition, there was a board showing the blue suit with a swatch of the material used (see right).
It revealed something quite interesting. There were actually two swatches: one was as seen in the series; the other was much lighter blue with bright red pinstripes and was labeled ‘ORigiNaL FABRiC’.


This was because it had been over-dyed with a darker blue to arrive at the screen used colour (see left). This seriously complicate matters, as it means it does not exist as screen-seen, but would have to be found as it was woven and then over-dyed to get a match, and that would be hit and miss until it was done right.

In a circumstance like this it may just be easier to directly recreate the fabric as it looks rather than match it as manufactured, and Spoonflower is just made for that job!

I am working on some blue pinstripe fabric, as seen in my test swatch, but if you are eagle-eyed you might notice the design for Peter Davison’s trousers and hat band there too.
I have never seen the hat band ribbon, even when I went looking for it in 1982 while it was current; and the trouser fabric was discontinued during the Davison era, resulting in him wearing a different design of trouser for his final season.
All this makes it near impossible to accurately match these on a budget, without Spoonflower that is!

I quite enjoyed making my Six Trousers recently, and would like to continue getting some tailoring experience so plan to make some Five trousers as well.
Ironically I stumbled across some fabric which is almost (but just not quite) identical to the Five fabric, made by of all makers, Malabar (see below). However, finding a truly perfect match for the striped fabric would be near impossible.
It was a fabric from Malabar’s Shamois range, you may recall, I used for my Mk II and Mk III Tennant coats.
The design I am using for my Five fabric comes from Mark Ferris, a friend from the Doctor Who Forums who lives in Australia. He has been working on the design for a while (see below).

© Mark Ferris 2009
With his permission I have taken and refining it further with a view to getting it printed. Mark had produced the design in Photoshop at low resolution, so I redrew it in Illustrator for clarity, making it pin-sharp, before exporting an RGB jpeg that Spoonflower could print from (see below).

I choose the upholstery weight, as I felt the quilting was a little thin for making my trousers. The fabric comes 55 inches wide, so I can get the height of a trouser leg across the fabric. I have ordered 2 yards, as I don’t think a single yard would cover it.
Orders take about two weeks to be sent out, so it is not an over-night service.

The fabric arrived this week, and I must say it is a very nice user-experience when it arrives.

My fabric arrived wrapped in tissue paper, with a Spoonflower sticker to keep it snug (see left). It’s like Christmas!



I carefully opened the tissue paper and my fabric was inside, complete with a nice little compliment slip, fabric printed naturally! (see right).




What I think I am going to do is keep this printed logo, and sew it into the back of the trousers when they are done, as a sort of designer label!

I unfolded the fabric and I must say I am very pleased with the result (see below). It is a very good match to the design I supplied; there is no sign of any banding (that I had been warned can happen); and the upholstery weight I have gone for is just right, being heavier than the first tests I had done, but not at all stiff the way you might think.

The plan now is to get some more experience making trousers before attempting the ones for the final suit, so making some Five trousers fits the bill perfectly.
I will start cutting them just as soon as I can.

Watch this space!