With the jacket and pants done, it’s time to wrap up the rest of the uniform.
Undershirt
Planetary Union uniforms feature a black v-neck shirt with division colored collar underneath the jacket. Both short-sleeve and long-sleeve tees appear in the show, so there are options here.
The quick and dirty way to make a uniform tee is to just take an off-the-shelf black shirt and cut off the neckline. Replace the existing collar with a piece of leftover jacket fabric and you’re done.
Alternatively, you could make the shirt yourself. So many great patterns and instructions are already out there that I don’t have anything to add. Instead, here’s a brief collection of free resources:
- How to Sew a V Neck T-shirt by MellySews – Blog and YouTube
- How to sew a v-neck t-shirt by Seamwork – Blog
- Sewing a T-shirt V-Neck Band by Sew20Something – Blog
- How to make a v-neck t-shirt by It’s Always Autumn – Blog
- Long Sleeve T-Shirt Pattern by LifeSewSavory – Blog
- Free Pattern! The Sunday V Neck by Friday Pattern Company – Shop
- 33 Fab Free Shirt Sewing Patterns at AllFreeSewing – Site
Insignia
To produce the insignia, I’m using a Cricut Maker, a popular die-cutting machine with plenty of uses for cosplayers. It can precisely cut most fabrics, up to 2.5mm foam, balsa wood, paper, cardstock, and numerous other materials.
The downside is that using the Cricut requires using their custom software Design Space. I am convinced that no human being was involved in the development of this program. If, however, one abandons figuring out why anything about the interface is set up the way that it is, the Cricut can be a versatile tool.
Design Space can import *.svg files and convert them into cuts. Download the free files here:
Import the desired insignia patterns into Design Space by using the “Upload” menu and insert the images onto the canvas. Everything is already sized correctly, but check that Design Space has properly imported all elements of the insignia and that nothing is missing.
Badges
Division in the Planetary Union fleet is noted by a badge worn on the chest. The five divisions are Command, Security, Technical, Medical, and Science.
I cut the colored pieces out of 2mm craft foam and the white backing out of vinyl upholstery fabric. It makes things easier later on to trace out the shape of the foam pieces on the fabric using a heat erasable pen. Cricut doesn’t produce one, but there are third party holders that accommodate all manner of pens.
Once you’ve imported the svg image into Design Space, you’ll want to duplicate the insignia pattern. One copy will remain a “Cut” operation, the other will be a “Draw” operation. “Attach” the draw pattern to the base so that Cricut knows that these two things go together. The insignia also has an optional “Score” ring that you need to “Attach” to it. Make sure that the base and the insignia have different colors so that Cricut knows they’re made from different material.
Although the recommended tool for the Maker’s “Craft Foam” preset is the Deep-Cut Blade, and that does seem to work for some people, I’ve gotten much cleaner results with the Knife Blade. Secure the foam with masking tape and do something else, this will take a while.
I used to use E6000 Spray-On Adhesive to hold my insignia together, which is what’s usually recommended when using foam for cosplay. Recently, I’ve started using regular Elmer’s All-Purpose Glue on these, and it seems to work just fine. Test whatever glue you’re using on some scrap.
Making The Foam Badge
Once the glue sets, seal the foam. The standard advice here is a heat gun, but an iron works fine for pieces this small and simple. Place a piece of parchment paper over the badge and gently press for 3-5 seconds with the “Silk” setting, or 250°F (120°C). Allow to cool.
After the pieces are sealed, the last step is a quick spray with clearcoat. This protects the final product and gives it just that little extra shine. There’s no need for expensive sealants for this, regular spray-on topcoat from the hardware store works fine.
Secure the finished badge to the jacket, I use Velcro for this. Glue or stitch the softer loop-side to the jacket and glue the hook-side to the badge. This way the hooks won’t pull and damage the fabric in the wash.
Epaulets
Rank in the Planetary Union is shown on shoulder epaulets. The ranks appearing in the show are Ensign, Lieutenant, Lt. Cmdr, Commander, Captain, and Admiral. Rank is denoted by the bars appearing on the epaulets, with admiralty having five stars.
Flag officers (captains and admirals) have a slightly different design for their epaulets than other officers. Lower ranks have the bars centered and a small bar on the inside with a dot or button in the center. Flag officers have a plate at the front of each epaulet with some writing on it. It’s too small to make out in the actual show, so I’ve guessed at some text.
The epaulets are made in two layers. A base layer that gives it thickness and shape, and an upper layer that provides the details. We’ll need three different shades of grey 2mm craft foam to produce most of the epaulets. I like to use leftover from the division insignia for the colored button. The button is small enough that it fits into the scrap that would otherwise be thrown out.
Making The Foam Epaulets
Cut and glue the epaulets, remember that they are mirror images of each other.
Place a piece of parchment paper over the top epaulet and press for 20-30 seconds with the “Silk” setting, or 250°F (120°C). Shape the epaulet by folding it over something cylindrical, like a mason jar, and hold it there while it cools. Flip the epaulet over, iron the underside for another 20 seconds, and hold it over the jar again, top side up, until it cools.
Once the epaulets are sealed and shaped, topcoat according to the directions on the can. Once that fully sets, you can attach the Velcro or some other fastener to hold them onto your jacket.
New Horizons Jacket
As already noted, the third season rolled out a number of visual changes to The Orville. Improved visual effects, new sets and, notably here, new costumes. Thankfully, the pants look unchanged, but the jackets have a number of small differences adding up to a significantly different look.
Differences
The season three collar has black piping, rather than division colored piping. This is a fairly quick change, since it involves following the same instructions above, just with black fabric when making the collar piping. Likewise, the sleeve ribbing seems to feature more texture than before, for this panel a piece of black fabric with the same texture as the division colored fabric should work.
The New Horizons jacket also doesn’t feature side ribbing or a side pocket. Instead, the whole side panel is textured; again, this likely means that the side panels are cut from the same type of material as the body panels, just in black. Making the New Horizons jacket will require an extra type of fabric, black textured, in addition to the division colored and grey textured fabrics and the flat black.
Extend the side panel bottom allowance to 1″ to match the front and back panel hem allowance. Ignore the side padding/lining and pocket pattern pieces. Line the side panels using the same method as the rest of the jacket.
New Horizons Shoulder
The most notable of the changes for the new horizons jacket is the shoulder. Instead of a single yoke piece, the shoulder is split into three pieces that are all seamed together. The light grey portion of the yoke is unchanged and the new pieces are cut out from the front and back body panels.
Adjust the body panels as shown:
Cut at the dotted lines, the portion removed from the body panels will become the new yoke front and back segments. Add 5/8″ seam allowance to both sides of the new seams being added between the yoke extension and the body panels.
Making the Yoke
Cut out all three yokes pieces. Interface the center yoke piece and then attach the front and back segments, matching the notches.
Trace out the yoke lining by lining up all three yoke pieces or by tracing out your finished yoke on a piece of lining material. Flat-line or underline the whole yoke together.
Attach piping around three sides of the completed yoke. Do not add piping to the shoulder seam.
From here, follow the previous jacket instructions as normal, using the extended yoke and shortened body panels in place of the regular ones.
Other Variations
Part of the appeal of making a costume yourself is getting to customize it. Here, I want to go over a few of the variations on the basic Planetary Union officer uniform that we’ve either seen during the show, or haven’t but can possibly guess at based on what we have seen. This is not meant to be exhaustive, but just an idea of ways that the basic pattern can be developed.
Insignia
The insignia change a bit throughout the series. Initially, both division insignia and rank epaulets look like injection molded PVC and the insignia show division color on white. In season two the division insignia are a darker silver. In the third season they again change style, remaining silver. It’s unclear, but likely that the silver color is metallic rather than plastic as was used in the first season.
For a season two version, you can use the exact same *.svg patterns and simply use the same grey foam as with the epaulets. Another alternative is to 3d print the insignia, epaulet and badge files both appear on Thingiverse. The later season insignia do look more rigid (and less colorful) than those from season one.
Additional Ranks
The use of half bar on the Lt. Cmdr. insignia suggests that there may be additional ranks not yet seen on screen in The Orville. Most notably, the show has not featured anyone sporting Lieutenant Junior Grade bars, though we can likely guess at what it would look like from the existing ranks. I’ve also tried to estimate what a Warrant Officer’s epaulets might look like.
Both of these are added to the epaulet download above.
There appears to be only one rank for Admiral, in modern navies there are typically five such ranks: Commodore (Rear Admiral Lower Half), Rear Admiral (Upper Half), Vice Admiral, (Full) Admiral, and Fleet Admiral. There’s typically only one of the last, and that would be the five star admiral.
We could guess at the remaining four star orientations but it looks like the Planetary Union only has one admiral rank given that all the admirals we encounter have identical epaulets.
NCO Uniforms
Enlisted personnel don’t appear much in The Orville, since the show focuses on the adventures of the senior staff of the titular starship. This makes reference images hard to find, but these crew members wearing grey uniforms are most likely non-commissioned officers.
NCO’s wear grey uniforms with division piping, which follow the same lines as the officer uniforms. The grey may be the same textured grey material as used in the officer jackets or it may be a grey knit similar to the black portions of the officer uniforms. Or a combination of the two, or something else entirely. There’s room for creativity here.
We can’t cheat with topstitching on these jackets, we’ll need to properly do the piping between the side and front/back panels, between the yokes and the front/back panels, and over the zipper. Well, it might be possible to cheat a little bit with a division colored zipper.
What’s most interesting is the hint of some stripes on the shoulders. I’m going to guess that these are NCO rank insignia. Once again, there’s very little to go on here and I can’t see into the minds of the show’s costume department, this is just a guess.
A guess that I’m going to run with.
NCO Rank Insignia
The Orville is heavily inspired by Star Trek and its spinoffs, it pretty much goes without saying. In the “Star Trek” franchise, the enlisted crew are typically referred to by the rank “Crewman” a derivative of the Naval rank of “Seaman” but, y’know, without the “sea” part.
Since The Orville already has simplified officer ranks, we can also reasonably assume that it has simplified NCO ranks as well. Based on that, if we assume that those stripes are indeed rank insignia, then the enlisted ranks might look something like this:
Now, how do we make these and put them onto the actual uniform jacket? One obvious possibility is that they are part of the jacket itself. This would mean producing different jackets for every NCO rank and size. I guess that’s not really a big deal in the future, with their synthesizers and all; maybe the computer custom tailors every uniform. It’s also not unreasonable for costumes, the jackets are all produced in small batches. For this, simply cut the yoke pattern at the desired locations, add back in the seam allowance, and piece the yoke together with piping in place.
I want to consider an alternative that’s more similar to the officer epaulets.
The stripes might be patches, secured with stitches or some other fastener over the shoulder yoke. Each patch would be the same width and have division-colored piping on the front and back. They might look something like this:
The simple design means that you should be able to easily embroider the patches, even without an embroidery machine. I’m using short lengths of piping to put one together, since there’s already leftover from the jacket and pants construction.
Making the Patches
Trace the yoke pattern piece and mark 1-1/4″ on either side of the notches. For the one and three stripe options, cut in half at this line and make a note to add 5/8″ seam allowance on either side.
Do the center and side piping, as needed. I understitched the center piping, but it may not be necessary.
Finish with piping on the front and back edges.
Cut the underside and interfacing using the same pattern without a center seam.
Attach interfacing to the top piece, following the manufacturer’s instructions. If using Velcro, interface the underside as well and attach the hook-side to the bottom.
Sew the underside to your interfaced patch top, right sides together, leaving one edge open. Flip, press, and topstitch around the edge to close the remaining side.
You can secure the finished rank patch to your jacket with fasteners, much like the officer rank insignia, or with just a quick set of running stitches.
Congratulations!
That’s it, you’ve finished very own Planetary Union uniform properly suited to your rank and division! Now you’re ready to take on whatever the galaxy can throw at you!
One response to “Orville Uniform Finishing Touches and Variations”
[…] were still too small to be usable even for patches and so much black fabric leftover from all my Orville Uniforms that the black scraps deserved their own separate […]