That being said, for the first science fiction and comic book convention that I was able to actually make in years I had to dress up in a TOS science dress.
However, I quickly realized that for a high quality dress it would cost me about $500, which was over half my budget for the convention. Add in a TOS command wrap for my boyfriend, and we simply would not have been able to go after we got our costumes and props.
Then I thought to myself, I know how to sew! I will make the costumes! They will be glorious! I ordered the necessary props online and went out to hunt for fabric.
I decided to go a little cheaper on the rank bands and used something I found in the fabric store. That way I could totally justify getting phasors to go with the costumes.
I was originally going to design and sew the dress free hand, but that dress is a lot more intricate than it looks. Fortunately I found a pattern online on this fourm. Amazingly, the specifications were for my size! Until I realized after I made it that I had been dieting for the last few months, so it did end up being pretty loose on me...
So to blow up the pattern in a way that it stayed accurate, I used this huge ream of thin paper I had and painstakingly drew a grid with 16X16cm squares. This took me and my boyfriend three days.
I got to watch a lot of Star Trek and Hercules during that three days (and yes, that is a Cardassian sunrise in that cup).
Once that was done, I used my dormant drawing skills to draw the pattern onto the graph. Everything was going great.
Then booze got involved. Because everything is a lot more fun when your drinking amirite? Still, the next step of pinning and cutting out came out okay.
Trying to piece the pieces together was much more difficult than it should have been, and I ended up going with a "as long as it f***ing stays together" approach.
I realized half way through that the seams were wrong, but I was already behind and there was no way in hell I was going to take a seam ripper and redo it. I added a zipper that went along one of the decorative back seams to make it less intrusive.
I completely freehanded the command wrap using a shirt as a size base, since I was fairly overconfident from sewing three successful shirt wraps when I was a freshmen in high school. Did I also mention I was sober back then too?
Sorry about the butt shot, my boyfriend was the photographer for this one. Oh, and the reason this fabric was not ironed was because my iron actually broke on the dress. Go me.
Since the drinks kept on getting stronger, his did not come out all that good. I felt really bad about that. However, we still were better than some of the super cheap store bought halloween costumes that were walking around that the convention. The man walking around as Scotty put everyone to shame though.
Here are the finished outfits.
He was such an amazing Scotty. I felt inadequate standing next to him.
Killing an undead redshirt and an adorable undead tribble.
My captain with Scotty.
Even if our outfits are less than perfect, we still had just as much fun making them together as we had at the convention itself. I am actually going to remake them, when I have a longer amount of time (one week was not enough) and I am not drinking.
The best part? Most of the Next Generation cast was at the convention, and all of us trolls that dressed up in TOS outfits got such dirty looks the whole time. Come one guys, why would you hate on other Trek lovers? Even if they have a different favorite series, it is irrelevant. Trekkies have to stick together.
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