Bigger on the Inside

The Doctor and TARDIS

The Doctor

The TARDIS

Will and I have been watching the most recent Doctor Who reboot for the last few months, so naturally The Doctor came up as a costume idea for Will.  (The 11th is our favorite.)  But who should I go as?  My favorite companion never even met Matt Smith, so that was out.  I don’t have blonde curly hair like River Song (though this was super tempting) and I can’t cross dress well enough to pull off Jack Harkness.  But after all the companions have come and gone, whom is The Doctor left with?  Yes that’s right, Sexy.  (And my name is Lexi so that just works incredibly well.)  It always comes back to The Doctor and his TARDIS traveling through space and time…

For my Sexy (TARDIS) halloween costume I used this fabulous fit and flare Burda pattern 6744 with 100% polyester in TARDIS blue. (Just kidding about the color, but the girl in the check out line did ask me if I was making a TARDIS costume based on my materials alone so I figure it was close.)  The pattern was easy to follow and the dress came out perfect.  I did drop to a size lower than I measured out since I wanted it very form fitting with the stretchy polyester.

Finished dress plus some sexy socks

After I finished the dress I decided to pull out my embroidery machine and whip up a patch that reads “Police public call box” and another for the 11th Doctor’s “St John Ambulance” sticker.  The former was easy, the latter gave me lots of grief especially because I couldn’t figure out how to get the letters to center around a figure I wasn’t going to embroider.  Eventually I just gave up and stopped the machine after the letters printed.  If you want either pattern send me an email and I’ll shoot them your way.  All I did was embroider them on cut-away stabilizer that I then trimmed to form the basis of the patch.  I then folded the fabric around the stabilizer, pressed, and 1/8 of an inch from the edge.  I finally basted it to the dress.

For the Police call box notice on the TARDIS I used an iron on transfer.  I sized this picture down to 4×5, inverted it and printed it onto photo paper.  I then used my handy dandy paper cutter to cut it down to size.  I ironed it onto some cotton fabric then removed the paper backing immediately for “a matte” look.

I next cut some interfacing down to 4×5, put the iron on transfer over the paper and folded the edges back like I did for the “Police public call box” patch.  But here I didn’t want any pinholes to damage my iron on so I used tape to hold everything in place while I stitched around the edges.  When the stitching was in place I removed the tape.  It worked like a charm!

My basting cheat for the iron on transfer.

The last step was to add a lantern headpiece.  I tried a mock up using a water bottle and hated it, but I got the idea to use an old spice bottle from my last blog post.  I am really happy with how it turned out (and as a bonus it smells like cinnamon…)  If you want detailed steps on how to make it, read my “TARDIS headpiece” post here.

Oh and I won’t post me in the full costume before Halloween because in the words of River Song… SPOILERS!  But check back next Monday night and I’ll add it, but for now, here’s my mannequin wearing it…

Sneak peek of my TARDIS dress…