Ah the costume that Re-started it all. This costume and character has come to mean so much to me I have to tell the back story before I tell you about putting the costume together.I was in my last year of school, very stressed and in a bit of a slump. I hadn't gone to Dragon*Con in a few years and had no costumes that fit. I knew I'd be a bit sad if I didn't have something to wear. I think I only had a few weeks till the Con to put anything together. I was whining about the fact on facebook and a friend suggested that I go as Sarah Jane as it would be easy to put together, and since I could do it with my own hair. I loved the idea of being Sarah, but how to make sure people would know who I was suppose to be? I had bought the Doctor Who pattern book a year ago and had always wanted to make the K-9 Bag, I thought it was the perfect chance to make something that would help to ID Sarah for other people and make the costume a little more then just store bought things.
I used this site to go though all of Sarah Jane's costumes to pick one I could reconstruct cheaply and quickly, but also be recognisable. I chose the Time Warrior, because not only did I like the outfit, but it was her first costume, and except for the sweater and jacket I had everything I needed. I worked late into the night trying to finish K-9, the problem with him being not only was the pattern quite odd, (really everything in that book is a guide line, God knows they didn't use there own patterns to make the products pictured in it!) . I also couldn't find (for cheep enough) a thick grey material to make him from. I ended up buying one thick material in the wrong color and one thin in the right color and sewing them both together, making for a very hard time sewing. I was also still very new to sewing and hadn't really become comfortable with it, and so got easily frustrated. But I finished (just) and posted pictures of my purse on the Crafty_Tardis LJ group, where a very nice member, who ended up become a friend I look forward to seeing every year, told me I should join the parade with the Doctor Who group. I told her I was concerned that my costume wasn't good enough because except for k-9 it was store bought clothing. She told me it didn't matter. So I joined the group and met some lovely people. They invited me out to dinner and the photo shoot and really the rest is history. I re-found my joy of costuming with them and a new track room to hang out in.
The costume itself:
The pants where a black knit ( I know it's a brown suit now, but the very grainy copy I had of the episode and the pictures made it hard to tell. The boots where brown ones my mother had, a bit too big but they where all I had. The shirt was likewise one I had in my closet opened as wide as possible to give the look of a big collar. the sweeter was the closest I could find with a round neck (v-neck was in then) and a plaid. I decided shape was more important then color. the jacket I found was from Goodwill, it had a big collar on it, but was shiny, I decided that if the jacket she wore in TW and the one from IotD mated they would have had this jacket. I curled my hair in a very 70's style do, but it was over 90F the day I wore it and my hair fell down almost at once. I'd love to redo the costume, and make it better and more accurate, not to mention the fact that all of the costume is about three sizes too large now. (Go me!)
Thank You Sarah Jane you brought me back to all of the fun!
