Jedi on a Shoestring

At the age of eight I saw Star Wars on TV for the first time. I was instantly converted from fantasy to scifi (plus having my first crush on Luke Skywalker), and dreamed of being a Jedi. But try as I might, I never managed to get the Force to work, never built my own lightsabre and never flew an X-wing. However ...


A friend decided to hold a Star Wars party for his birthday last weekend. Fancy dress was optional, but I wasn't going to pass up the chance to fulfil another ambition. I decided I didn't want to pay out for a flimsy Star Wars costume off the web. For one thing, the only options in terms of female characters are Leia's slave get-up (not in October!) which I do not (sadly) have the figure for, the classic white Leia dress or Amidala's white two piece (again I no longer have a stomach I'd show to ANYONE!)

So I started hunting around. I'm not an expert dress maker, but one quintessential item of Jedi clothing is the cloak. You can find a basic pattern for one here which is dead easy to make. And while I'm not the greatest seamstress I can usually manage to stitch something together. I made myself a Blake's Seven outfit as a teenager without any pattern at all, but I did find this one on ebay.(see below)

This is from the States but ships to the UK, and very handy if you wanted to do Lord of the Rings as well. :) It wasn't too expensive either and came in good time. However, my back-up plan of raiding the local charity shops paid off well enough that I didn't actually have to make anything in the end (even if I did end up looking like Ewan McGregor's Ben Kenobi without the beard.).

And no, this isn't actually me

I bought a pair of cargo trousers, a heavy belt and a pale top with cross-over design on it that made up my basic Jedi outfit. My cloak was a bit of a cheat. My older brother-in-law does Roman/Celtic re-enactment, and loaned me one of his genuine woollen cloaks for the event. My nephew donated a lightsaber from his Star Wars collection, and my padawan rat's tail came from Claire's Accessories. It's cost me about £20 in all, and most of it I can wear again as 'normal' stuff.

This is me.

And, um, yes - that IS my husband dressed as Princess Leia. It WAS a joke!

(Incidentally, his dress is taken from the same basic pattern for the cloak, the link for which is here.)
So what do you think? Good enough? How have you gone about making your scifi costumes? Do you make them from scratch, shop around for pieces that will do the job or buy the ready-made ones? I wish you could all post some pics!