A few months ago, I had a great idea for creating really easy TNG-inspired uniforms for our show. Dale finally gave me the go-ahead a few weeks ago for our Atomic Lollipop show and I made them up in a few days, including drafting the pattern.

Cpt. Field & Lt. Cmdr Kumquat (The Dandies) Cpt. Field (Dale) Lt. Cmdr Kumquat (Andie) The Dandies, selfie The Dandies by Kenway Northyork

How did I make these?



For Captain Field, I took a long-sleeved stretchy shirt and made a pattern from that, which I then hacked into the colour blocking you see. The real TNG uniforms have a zipper up the side, because they are made from poly with little stretch. I can only imagine how much hotter the cast would have been in those. Pro tip, remember to add seam allowance, because I forgot in my excitement. Luckily, that oversight was easily remedied with rectangular blocks in the side seams and the sleeves.

It was a really easy garment to put together in spite of all the pattern pieces. I was super pleased. Although, I greatly underestimated the amount of black fabric I needed and almost ran out.

I really love making clothes from existing clothes. It reduces a lot of the guess work and gives you a pattern that you know will fit. Also, you know what aspects need to change. The shirt I used for Dale was too short, but gave me an idea of how much it had to be lengthened.

Lt. Comm. Kumquat’s uniform was also made by copying an existing piece of clothing. I used a dress that had princess seams and was made of stretchy material. The princess seams help take the guess work from the colour blocking.

I started off creating a skant, which does not have the v-block at the bottom, but my original pattern was too skant. It basically reached just below my bum and I wasn’t willing to go that skant for the stage!

I added the block on the bottom. I will be making this again and adding to the length so that it is more like the TNG skant uniform.

Both uniforms are made of a stretch poly and are pretty thick. Hence, hot. With my short sleeves and always being cold, I was in the perfect thing for me, but poor Dale with his long sleeves and always being hot was dying.

I’ll be making more of these in the future once I get more black fabric. I have some lovely gold, as well. The next step is to make some Voyager-inspired uniforms and then TNG dress uniforms and then 29th century uniforms and then….