Saturday 24 October 2009

Hat Bandana - test swatch

After waiting a few weeks, the 8 inch square swatch I ordered of the hanky before committing to the full run, has arrived – and I think it looks very good, considering.


I did just one corner of the hanky at full size so I could see how well the artwork was reproducing.

The colours are looking pretty good and the feel of the fabric I choose, (a 60% bamboo, 40% cotton mix) has a surprisingly loose, limp drape to it, making it not dissimilar to a real hanky or scarf of this type.

Spoonflower now offer a good range of fabric types and weights, ranging from this lightweight mix to a slightly heavier quilting weight; through to a heavyweight upholstery fabric; as well as a recently added knitted jersey material. They have also, from time to time, added special fabrics while stocks lasted, so it is always worth checking back on their site to see what is available.

The full size hanky is over half a metre square, so it is a little awkward getting them up on the Spoonflower fabric, given the width available. They fit two-up across the width, but leave a strip up the side of wasted fabric.
Rather than waste this, I had a little brainwave and have created for myself a fabric label to be sewn into the hankies giving my contact details and washing instructions. This saves me from going to the expense of having labels professionally made.



The only thing I can’t decide is if they should be white or red to blend in with the hankies so they are not too obtrusive. Luckily space permits me to print both and decide later.

I have also got lots of room to add in similar washing labels to go into the Five Trousers I have been getting commissions for recently.

So it’s now time to place the order and patiently wait for delivery of the fabric . . .
Just a reminder that this project would not be happening if it wasn’t for the web of Who fans who have contributed along the way.
TimeLord25 (aka Bob Mitsch) for setting the ball rolling on reproducing the hanky using Spoonflower.

Seventh Doctor Fan (aka George Chase) who own the screen-used hanky from Dragonfire. He gave us the accurate size for the hanky.

Cyber did the scans from a hanky belonging to his brother.

Doris Wildthyme was the first to identify the handkercheif’s style and circulated images of one he owned on the Doctor Who forum, though sadly they were never of high enough quality to use for this project.

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 a special blog for the Fifth Doctor 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 blog you are reading as I have been working on a replica of the Hanky that goes around his hat.

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 18 October 2009

Seven Hat Bandana


I know I have started this dedicated blog, but I must admit that Seven cosplay is not entirely my thing as Sylvester McCoy was not my favorite Doctor (sorry Seven fans and sorry Sylvester!).

However, I had an interesting request from a friend in the US recently who was looking to make a replica of the handkerchief that is wrapped around The Doctor’s hat, bandana-style (see left).

One of the original screen-used props had come up on eBay and a friend of his had managed to grab it.
The screen-used hanky had apparently been bought by costume designer Ken Trew from a tobacconist shop in London, and as a result it had been referred to as a Smoker’s Handkerchief ever since.
If you put ‘Smoker’s Handkerchief’ into Google you only get links to a few unrelated sites plus www.doctorwhoprops.com, who were the first to describe it as such (see right).
I have no doubt that in 1987 it was regarded as a Smoker’s Handkerchief, but I have found that if you put in ‘Paisley Bandana’ into Google,you get pages and pages of links to very similar hankies, many shown being used in a similar way, but none with quite the same design as The Doctor’s.

Anyway, the ultimate idea was to reproduce The Doctor’s hanky using Spoonflower and offer them as a group buy option to fellow Seven fans.
Since having fun with Spoonflower has become a hobby of mine recently, I could certainly see the possibilities . . .

An identical hanky had been scanned, but it had to be done in sections, since it was too big to fit on a scanner in one piece. Below are the six main usable scans.


Click to enlarge

To see what I had to work with, I quickly cobbled the pieces together to find that they did not match up as well I would have hoped.
Being a thin, woven fabric, the hanky had skewed out of shape and not of the scanned sections were remotely square (see below).


Click to enlarge


I looked at distorting the sections to get them back to their original shape, but it proved too difficult, as though I could get each part to look okay in isolation, they failed to meet up when brought together.

A bit of lateral thinking was needed.

It dawned on me that the hanky’s pattern had rotational and mirror symmetry, so I only needed to accurate create a eighth of the design, which I could then repeat to create the full image (see right).

It was then simply a question of finding the best sections from which to make up the required eighth, making the task seem a lot more manageable.

As a guideline I drew a triangle to show the segment I needed to do.
I then straightened the edge boarder to match and skewed it so the mirror symmetry lined along the diagonal of the segment. Once I was satisfied I had the segment as perfect as I could get it I could start step-and-repeating it around the hanky.
I took the eighth (below top left) and reflected it to make a quarter (below top centre) and then repeated that around to complete the four sides (below to right).


Click to enlarge

Luckily for the centre of the hanky a separate scan, however this too was somewhat distorted.
After tying to clean it up, I found it best to simply repeat the process I did for the rest of the hanky and perfect a single quarter (above bottom left) and repeat that around to complete the rosette (above bottom centre).
This then finished the design.

All that remained to do was prepare it for useable artwork by extending the area of the hanky to allow for a seam allowance when cutting them down to size and hemming the edges to make them neat and tidy.

All in all fourteen layers were needed to restore the hanky back to a complete form (see right).

Finally, having made an image I could upload to Spoonflower, I needed to work out the most efficient way of printing them.
Spoonflower offers a number of options when printing fabric: 8 inch square swatches; quarter yards; then multiples of full yards up to five, plus an option for 25 yards.


Annoyingly the hanky is too large for a quarter yard, so a minimum of one yard is needed to fit at least one full hanky, though you can fit two up on a yard. This does, however, leave a large amount of wasted fabric so I found that doing three yards was the most efficient, as it was possible to get ten full hankies together on one run of fabric.

Before doing a full test run, I waited until I had an order to send to Spoonflower and included a 8 inch swatch of part of the hanky so I could check how the colours and print quality was holding up.

I am just waiting for the swatch to arrive any day now . . . .
This project would not be happening if it wasn’t for the web of Who fans who have contributed along the way.
TimeLord25 (aka Bob Mitsch) for setting the ball rolling on reproducing the hanky using Spoonflower.

Seventh Doctor Fan (aka George Chase) who own the screen-used hanky from Dragonfire. He gave us the accurate size for the hanky.

Cyber did the scans from a hanky belonging to his brother.

Doris Wildthyme was the first to identify the handkercheif’s style and circulated images of one he owned on the Doctor Who forum, though they were never of high enough quality to use for this project.

Welcome to the New Doctor

My blog has regenerated yet again and begins another new spin-off.
This time to cover the costume items relating to the Seven Doctor’s costume.



As usual, in here I will only cover any work I do relating to Seven so it is all kept 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 . . .