need help for making coat/shirt/weird anime thing

[desperado]

ok for cosplay i have everything i really need. just need to make neji's coat (the white eyed guy from naruto) its basically a shortsleaved coat with a big thing around the kneck and little velcroe clasp things going across the zipper in two places and on the arms. here ill show you a pic of him. can anyon give me suggestions or ideas for how to make it?

[Debitt]

Hmmm...I have a few ideas for this brewing in my head. Is there any part of the coat in specific you need help with, or are you just unsure of where to start?

[desperado]

where to start and the neck peice. the straps should be much trouble but the neck peice is the biggest problem. never really done much of this kind of stuff before going to get my mom to help me make the stuff but she said i have to come up with all the plans and such

[Debitt]

Okay...don't hurt me for using the Mickey Mouse picture as an example, but I couldn't find anything else off hand.

Anyways - if you're making something you've NEVER tried making before, a simple, easy way to achieve a good costume without putting too much brain power into it would be to find something that probably has a pattern available and modify that. In this case the first thing that came to mind for me would be like the safari outfit there, since I'm sure it'd be pretty easy to find a pattern for that. Minor adjustments, of course, will need to be made.

First, and probably most obviously, would be the fact that you don't need all those pockets. Good. =D So nix the pockets. Second, you'll be substituting a zipper for buttons (which means the jacket will be a couple inches less wide). Third, you'll be subsituting Neji's collar for the collar in the picture. This is where the very roughly drawn collar at the bottom of the picture comes into play.

You'll need 2 pieces of the same shape (they'll need to be mirror images of one another to get a clean seam), and some fabric interfacing (iron on stuff that you put on the back of collars to get them to stand up like Neji's). My idea would be as such: Iron the interfacing onto the back of the 2 pieces of the collar, then sew them together and attach to the jacket. =3 Hopefully it'll come out nice. You can also probably sandwich a stiffer piece of cloth or padding into the collar, but I'm not sure how good the results would be. It depends on what you want to do, really. Anyways. After that, it's all a matter of attaching the collar to the jacket and adding the zipper. ^_^

I hope that was of some help. Good luck!

[desperado]

yeah it has helped. im going to try to get some materials this weekend or next and go from there

[Lynx]

You can also make a pattern from a piece of newspaper. cut the newspaper, pin it at the seams, see how it looks, you can even try it on to see if it's gonna fit if you're careful. i've used this trick before when i've had to design my own costumes for plays and such.