I am so pumped for the new season of The Orville. It’s easily my favorite show on television today. We’ve been waiting on season 3 for three years now and it’s finally out! This seems like the best time, then, to go back and finish up the uniform that I started putting together with the jackets by making the undershirt and pants to go with it.
The full uniforms consist of a jacket with division colored body panels and piping, an undershirt with colored neckline, and a pair of pants with division piping. If I want a full set of uniforms, then I have to come up with designs for the undershirt and pants.
Undershirt
The undershirt is pretty simple, it’s just a normal v-neck t-shirt with the neckline in division color. I’m tempted to add division color to the sleeve hem as well, but on review that doesn’t appear to be how they’re put together in the show.
It seems like there’s a long-sleeve tee as well, but that’s not any more difficult to make, just extend the sleeves. Hard to tell if it should be a Raglan sleeve or drop sleeve, but either should work fine. I’m going to go with a Raglan sleeve, just because that’s the pattern I had laying around.
Material isn’t too difficult, we just need something comfortably against the skin and sturdy enough to hold up under stress. Like a t-shirt should be. A cotton-polyester blend works.
The neckline doesn’t look stretchy, which is fairly typical for a v-neck. That means we don’t need to worry about finding new material for that, the neckline can just be made from the same material as the jacket front without the interlining layer.
I won’t belabor this part, because others have already written about making v-necks better than I could and there are already excellent patterns available.
Pants
The pants, on the other hand, have quite a bit going on. There’s the kneepads, for a start. They’ve also got division color piping that goes down the front of the legs and around the kneepad. This sort of construction is pretty atypical, so we’re not going to find any off-the-shelf patterns.
Which means it’s time to get creative.
The concept drawings show two different fly and waistband designs, so that’s not much help in narrowing things down.
Initial Pants Draft
For women’s pants things are a bit easier, women’s fashion has more variety to it than men’s and I found this lovely pattern from ClosetCore that is almost perfect. Someone could get pretty close by just using their pattern and tucking some piping into the front-center seam.
Since I want a men’s uniform, I have to draft it myself. Still, we can look around for inspiration.
Obviously, most pants patterns tend to be divided into front/back pieces and not outside/inside pieces. That means adjusting the pattern front piece with an extra seam up the front and adding the necessary seam allowance. Which is where our old standby, The American Garment Cutter, shows up once more. Seriously. Men’s pants haven’t changed much since Mr. Regal’s day and it looks like they won’t change much by Captain Mercer’s, so why not? Plus, he’s already noted the centerline of the trouser front for us, saving just that little bit of work on our end.
All right, so we can find a basic pants pattern and insert a line of piping down the front. If only the outfit were actually that simple. It’s not, of course. We’ve also got to worry about the knees. Which leads us to our first really big question, are the knee pads over the pants or part of the pants? Sparking the related question, does the piping go around the pad or is it simply that the pad also has division piping on one side?
It’s hard to find good references, and not every screen used costume is the same, but it does generally look like there isn’t a break in the piping, which suggests that the keepad is part of the pants and not a separate piece. Based on that, I’ve modified Regal’s trouser draft into a test pattern.
I think it’s a pretty good start. It matches the concept drawings and looks pretty similar to what Bortus is modeling for us. I do still need to figure out how to add pockets and a waistband.
I like merging the pockets with the split front, the way the Pietra pants do. The half elastic waistband is also an interesting way to achieve a perfect fit and a formal front. I’m going to see if I can adapt those ideas into the final design.
For the pocket, I want to trim the top of the side panel piece so that the pocket itself becomes the new top of the side piece. The pocket bag gets attached at the top of the side panel and folded over. It’s going to be a lot easier to put together than a traditional welt pocket or side pocket.
A 15° diagonal line gives the pocket a comfortable opening. Making the pocket bag 7″ deep gives enough space for, say, a cellular telephone.
The bag will be asymmetric about the fold line, since once side will come up a little bit to meet the waistline of the inner piece. Doing this means we’re not awkwardly reaching up to our waist, which is going to be under the jacket. It still needs to be high up for comfort, though, so it’s a bit of a balancing act there. I think 2″ seems like a decent amount.
We trim the pants at the blue line and then attach the pocket bag on the same line. Once the pocket is attached to the side panel, we’ll fold it over and run a line of stitches on either side. The pocket bag is now attached to the side panel and will also be absorbed into the seams on either side.
Back Waistband
Regal’s drafting is for traditional button closures, elastic existed but its use in waistbands wouldn’t become popular until the invention of synthetic rubber decades later. Adjusting the pattern for a half elastic waist involves quite a bit of extra work.
The waistband should be at least 2″ wider than the hips so that there’s enough ease to actually get it on. Given that Regal’s design is for fitted pants with a closure, the fronts are sized for the natural waist, not the hips. The tops of his front pieces are about 1/4 the waist measure as are the tops of the back pieces.
Seat measurements are usually about 6″ larger than the waist, so the pants need to get at least 8″ larger at their top. We are removing the darts and didn’t come in on the front side seam, which actually gives us back those extra two inches. Leaving at least three inches that need to be added to the back waist.
The waistband itself is just a rectangle that is 5″ tall and half the waist plus 6″ wide. It needs to be tall enough space to create an enclosure for a length of 2″ wide elastic. The elastic is going to be cut to a 90% of one-half the waist measure, or 45% of the full-waist.
The last adjustment is to cut a waistband for the front. That’s super simple, because it’s just a simple rectangle that’s slightly shorter than the front waistband. Six inches shorter, to be exact. It’s just half the waist measurement wide and 5″ tall, the same height as the back waistband.
If putting these on still turns out to be a pain, if we haven’t added enough space somehow, we can modify things further by adding a button extension onto the front waistband. Hopefully we won’t need to, but the option is there if needed. A button extension just adds an inch or two to one side of the front waistband.
Conclusion
The finished pants design has functional pockets, a flat front, and an elastic waistband to ensure a comfortable fit. It seems just about perfect. Now we just have to put it together. That process is something to take a look at another time. As a preview, it looks a bit like this:
