#ttutorial

Part One

Step One: Jacket: Tape Pattern

Wrap your torso loosely in a layer of plastic wrap and then a layer of tape going down to at least your belly button. It really helps to have a friend to get your back and shoulders covered! Draw your pattern pieces on one half with a sharpie. I drew a line straight down my back, one across my shoulder, one down my side, and another directly down the center of my chest. Cut carefully along all lines except for the center front to free yourself. Draw a line about halfway down the other side of your chest and cut along that. If your front piece doesn’t lay flat because of more curves, cut a line straight up front the bottom edge to the center point of your bust. You should be left with two pieces kind of like this.

Step Two: Paper Pattern

Trace your tape pattern onto paper, smoothing out the lines as you go. I like to do this step in one color and then go back in with another color and a ruler to straighten out the lines as much as possible.

*NOTE* All front pattern pieces are meant to be cut on the wrong side of the fabric, so they appear mirrored

Back Piece: Trace and smooth out lines. Measure along the neck edge and around the arm hole. Write these measurements down, you will need them to draft the collar and the sleeve, respectively. Add seam allowance all the way around, I like to use half inch seam allowances.

Front Piece: Be sure to mark the center front line onto the paper pattern as well. Mark a point about half an inch behind the center front line on the neck, this will be where your collar starts/stops. Draw a line going diagonally from this point to a point about two thirds of the way down the front edge of the piece. Draw a rectangle with this as the long side and a height of about four inches to make the front foldover flap (see next picture for visual) Measure the neck from the collar start/stop point to the shoulder as well as the armhole. Write these down. Add seam allowance all the way around. Ignore my label.

Collar: Add the front neck and back neck measurements together. Draw a half trapezoid with this measurement as one side, a height of double how tall you want the collar to be, and another side that is the neck measurement plus two inches. Add seam allowance to the top, bottom, and the diagonal side. The vertical side will be placed on the fold of your fabric

Sleeves: I used this tutorial and drafted a sleeve pattern using my armhole meaurements.

Cuffs: The cuffs will be drafted later on.

Step Five: Cut It Out

It’s time to cut out the jacket pieces! Make sure you are cutting your pieces with the grain running vertically up and down the pattern pieces and are cutting one right and one left, either by cutting with the fabric doubled or by flipping the pattern piece over for the second piece.

You should end up with:

2 back pieces

2 sleeves (mark front and back!

2 collar pieces (each cut on the fold) Interface the wrong side of one of these

2 front pieces

Now for the weird part. Take the left front piece and cut off the fold over tab. This is now the left front piece.

Now we are going to make some facings.

Right Front Facing: Take the right front pattern piece (the one with the tab) and cut another copy of it with the pattern piece flipped over that only goes up to about 2 inches past the center front line. Interface the backside of this piece. This is now the front right facing.

Left Front Facing: Repeat the steps for the right front facing with the left front pattern piece.

Step Three: Construction of the body

Sew the back pieces together right sides together down the center back. Press and finish this seam, topstitch if desired. 

Sew any darts in the front pieces.

Sew back pieces to front pieces along the side and shoulder seams,right sides together. Finish seams and topstitch where desired.

Make and hem two rectangles of black fabric for the epaulets.

Apply strips of gold ribbon to match the design for your character. Hand sew one of the embellished strips to each shoulder right over the shoulder seam

Try on what you have so far and adjust any fit problems that you notice.

Step Four: Collar, Sleeves, and Cuffs

Collar:

Sew the collar pieces to each other, right sides together, along the top and sides. Trim and finish seam allowances. Turn right side out, press, and topstitch.

Sew the collar onto the neck, open edge to neck, between the two collar start/stop points. Trim and finish seam allowance. You can encase the seam allowance in bias binding to prevent it from being seen and rubbing against your neck when worn.

Sew each facing onto its respective front along the top and side edges only, right sides together. Make sure to sew no further on the top edge than the collar start/stop point. Trim seam allowances, turn, press, and topstitch. The topstitching here is just to keep the pieces together before the bias edging is added, so keep it fairly close to the edge.  

Sleeves:

Sew each sleeve together along its length, making sure to sew one right and one left. Finish and press this seam. Turn the sleeves right sides out.

Gather the top of each sleeve lightly. Turn the body of the jacket inside out and slip each sleeve into its respective armhole. Pin well, using the gathering to evenly distribute the cap of the sleeve around the top of the armhole. Sew around once on the seam allowance and once just inside it. Finish the seam, I find it’s easiest to sew a zigzag stitch right next to the cut edge or to use pinking shears.

Turn the jacket right sides out again and check the fit. If it works, YAY! If it doesn’t, take in or let out seams until it does.

Cuffs:

Measure around one of the wrists. Make a cuff pattern following this diagram.

Cut four out of the blue fabric. Interface the wrong sides of two of them. Sew each interfaced piece to an uninterfaced piece right sides together along the top and sides only. Trim and finish seam allowances. Turn right side out, press, and topstitch.

Sew a cuff to the wrist of each sleeve, with the opening along the back of each sleeve. Trim the seam allowance and encase it in bias tape.

Step Five: Bias tape hell

*This step will take a long time! Be sure that you have a lot of pins and some matching thread. Going in sections helps!*

Measure around all of the edges of the jacket. You will need this much bias tape plus about a yard for the jacket only, you will need more for the butt cape. You can either use premade bias tape or make your own. I used this tutorial to make about 20 yards which was waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much. I only ended up using about a quarter of it for both the jacket and the butt cape thing, but extra bias tape is always good to have for encasing seams, so it’s not a big deal.

Add thin bias tape pieces across the chest and down directly through the bust points to imitate the grey pattern on the uniform.

Sew the rest of the bias tape around all the edges of the jacket, using this tutorial for corners and hand sewing the wrong side down. Be very careful around the collar, cuffs, and the flap where both sides will be visible.

Congratulations on conquering the bias beast!

Step Six: Embellishments and final steps

Give your jacket a very thorough pressing. Iron a crease in where the chest flap needs to fold. Try it on and figure out where the snaps will need to go to close the front. Sew the acceptor sides to the outside of the side without the flap and the positive side to the facing *only* of the side with the flap so that it will be invisible from the outside.

Sew two buttons onto the flap, going through the flap and the jacket body so that it will hold the flap down.

Add any buttons or other decorations to the epaulets to match your reference.

Try on the jacket and measure out the length of gold cord needed to make the loop over the shoulder on one side. Sew each end of the cord down under the epaulet so that the cut ends are hidden.

Slide another length of cord onto a metal ring and fold it over to attach it. Sew ribbon over the join to make it look neat. Also attach a piece of grey bias onto the ring and sew it onto the jacket side without the flap just above the horizontal stripe.

Attach the free hanging end of the cord to the loop, using ribbon to cover the join.

Add the collar pins to the jacket. I just sewed on squares and rectangles of grey fabric, but you can definitely do a lot more.

After you give the jacket a final pressing and fold the collar and cuffs, you’re done! YAY

Hopefully, it looks something like this!

Next up, the pants-

This tutorial is an absolute monster, so I’m breaking it up into a few parts-

This should help you draft your own Amestrian military uniform like the ones seen in FullMetal Alchemist. If people are interested, I may be able to make a printable pdf of my exact pattern available that can just be scaled to the proper size.

Part One:

Step One: Reference Material

The most important part of any costume is having good reference material to base it off of. Luckily, there are actual character reference sheets available in high definition for all of the characters in FMA. To find one, just google the character name plus reference. I used this one.

Break the costume down into its component parts. The undershirt will vary depending on which FMA character you are making, but all of the uniforms have the rest of the parts in common. Jacket, pants, butt cape thing.

Jacket: The jacket is very boxy and has overlapping front pieces and a high fold over collar. The weirdest bit is the flap on the right side of the jacket (as it faces you, when worn, it will be on your left side). This pattern is probably going to need to be drafted from scratch.

Pants: The pants are like high waisted military pants that had a baby with parachute pants. They should be pretty standard and can definitely be made using a modified commercial pattern.

Butt cape: This goes over the pants and should just be two trapezoids sewn together.

Step Two: Actual Materials

Since this is supposed to be a uniform, it is important to get a fabric that has the right weight and texture. If you’re not sure what fabric to use, any fabric that is actually used in uniforms will be your best bet. Twill, gabardine, and poplin are all good choices. Try to get a cotton or cotton blend because it will iron nicely and make the uniform look crisp while still being breathable. The color of blue you pick is entirely up to you and whether you’re going for accuracy or realism. I ended up going with a royal blue cotton twill from fabric.com.

Yardage depends entirely on your size and how much you think you’re going to mess up. To calculate approximately how much yardage I needed, I looked at the recommended yardage on a jacket pattern and a pants pattern in my size, added two yards for the butt cape and an additional yard for mistakes. I’m about 5 feet, 3 inches and a standard pattern size eight and I ended up buying 6 yards of my main blue fabric, which was more than enough even with all my mistakes. I ended up cutting the entire jacket twice and I still had quite a bit left over.

In addition to the main blue fabric, you’ll need to get:

Grey fabric for the edging, 1 yard

Medium weight interfacing, 3 yards

Gold cord

Gold ribbon

Metallic shank buttons, I got ones with little coats of arms on them

7-9 inch all purpose zipper to match blue fabric

Black fabric for shoulder pieces (and boot covers if you’re making them)

Brown pleather, if you’re making a character that needs a holster

Sew on snaps (I used size four)

Now that you have all of your materials, let’s move on to the jacket!