How to make quick and easy star trek costumes

Halloween might not be the only time of year we have to quickly rush and make ourselves a costume that won't break the bank account, for me at least. I do love a costume party however sometimes I simply don't have the time nor energy to make an intricate costume for an already expensive event, so this post will show you how I threw together a really simple couples costume. We are both massive Star Trek nerds and seeing as our costumes had to begging with our initials Captain Janeway and Captain Archer worked perfectly. So here is how you can go about doing it (if you aren't much of a  fan of reading you can scroll to the bottom to watch the video.)

In these tutorials I will show you how to make Janeway's uniform and badge, felt badges for archers uniform as well as how I added on the stripes.

What you will need:

Captain Archer:

-Blue boiler onsie (£15 off amazon) or a blue zipper jacket

-felt of the colours -red, grey, deep blue, navy, light blue.

-thread/safety pins

-a plush beagle

-glue gun

-white embroidery thread

-yellow fabric ( or I used puff paint)

Captain Janeway:

-2 cheap same size t-shirts, one black and one red.

-thread

-pins

-scissors

-measuring tape

-black zip
-grey felt (or if you've got a coms badge you won't need this)

Star Trek Enterprise Flight Jacket Patches

Now to the making!

Here's a link to a rough Template for the Enterprise badge incase you don't want to freehand it.
If you want to draw your own template then this is what the Star Trek Enterprise badges look like.
I made a seperate template for each circle, then for the decorations so either the spaceship or the Starfleet tick? arrow?  lets say logo. Lastly I cut very intricate templates for the shadows and highlights.
This way when you put all the templates on top of each other they will create your final layered badge

*Handy Tip: If you use tracing paper, sewing paper or simple baking paper, then its easier to see how big/small you should draw the next layer when free hand drawing your template*

From Startrek.com

Once you have your template, depending which badge you are making (I'm using the top left Enterprise Badge as an example,) trace the largest circle on the red felt, the middle sized circle on the grey felt and finally the smallest circle on the dark blue. As well as trace and cut your spaceship and its light blue highlights.

Once you have them cut out take the space ship and its highlights and very carefully using your glue gun (or whatever glue you are using to stick the felt together)  stick the light blue highlights on the the Enterprise ship.

Glue the starship and carefully place it in position on the dark blue circle.

*FRIENDLY ADVICE, DON'T GLUE EVERY CIRCLE TOGETHER, YOU HAVE TO EMBROIDER FIRST.  Trust me. I made that mistake. It is extremely hard to embroider multiple felt layers, especially with hardened glue in between*

Now mark out with a dressmakers chalk mark out the star patterns on your dark blue felt. Then get your embroidery needle and white thread at the ready to embroidery small dots on your felt for the stars. (I used the french knot technique which you can see how to do here)

NOW you can stick the dark blue felt onto the centre of the light grey one. And now comes the tricky bit. Embroidering letters.

Now, I've done my fair share of embroidery but for some reason letters always get me. I suggest some practice on a separate scrap piece of fabric or pre-draw the letters onto the felt in advance.  If you zoom into the picture you can see the badge has white stars all around it, So I additionally embroidered as many as I could fit around it.

Now lastly stick your badge onto the remaining red circle and your done!!!

Lastly once you've completed all our badges now it's is time to sew (or glue) all your Star Trek flight badges onto your uniform!!