Doctor (JD) Who

If your 8 year old son came to you and said that he wanted to be a doctor and dress like one for Halloween, you'd probably be thinking about surgical masks and scrubs, but not in my house. This year we introduced JD to the British sci-fi classic Doctor Who. We started with the modern versions. Although he did enjoy David Tennant, he found Matt Smith to be all possible definitions of awesome. It's not a big surprise. Smith's Doctor is charmingly goofy, much like my boy. So, I set about deciding how to turn JD into a mini Doctor.
Things needed from top to bottom:

 

1 red fez- no tassel (it is a rarely seen prop but an identifier)

1 bow tie (JD wanted red)

1 set of suspenders (also red)

1 slightly mismatched dress shirt

1 brown tweet jacket with elbow patches

1 pair of slightly short dark pants with cuffs

1 pair of dark socks and shoes

1 sonic screwdriver

All together it looks something like this:



We already had the pants, socks, shoes, and a blue and red striped dress shirt I found cheap at a consignment sale. The bow tie and suspenders were fairly easy as well. The site Dapper Lads had both and got them to me quickly. Think Geek has sonic screwdrivers. It was on JD's Christmas list, so we agreed that it could arrive a couple of months early. As it turns out my brother had already purchased one for him at Dragon*Con this year and, always wanting to support the next generation of geeks, he agreed to ship to him early.
Now comes the hard parts. The jacket and the fez.
The jacket turned out to be easier than I thought it would be. All it took was hitting the kid consignment stores and looking in the girl's section. I found this gem for $6.

Note the flower, metal buttons with rhinestones, and girly pockets. One seam ripper and a pair of pliers later, and we had one ungirly jacket. I found some wooden buttons to replace the old ones. There was some debate about switching which side of the coat the buttons went on, but that seemed like overkill. For the elbow patches I used simple brown iron on patches cut down to size.
The fez was really the only part I had to work for. Plain red kid sized fezs ( fez?,fezes?, fezon?, fezi?) are hard to come by in suitable costume price range. So, I googled it, and then ended up melding a few ideas together to come out with one that isn't perfect, but will do for Halloween.
The best help was found here. I ended up hand sewing the whole thing using the heavy duty needle that I use to sew ribbons onto Nix's ballet pointe shoes. I also didn't want trim or tassel, so the top is glued in to the inside of the fez instead of sewn to the outside. Like I said, not perfect, but workable. Here are a few fun action shots of that work.

And the finished product along with Nix who decided to be Amy Ponds, the doctor's traveling companion. We found all the parts to her costume in either her closet of mine. We threw in some hash marks on her arm, but not a lot because Silence is not often found in our home. We are temporarily dying her hair red tonight to make it more official. I'm a bit nervous about how that is going to go. The perfect accent to her costume also came from the uncle as an early Christmas present. It is a TARDIS necklace that really brings the whole thing together.

We got to try it out at a church thing Sunday night. JD was a huge hit with the teens and young adult crowd. He even had a few requests for pictures. The kids his age had no idea who he was dressed as, but that didn't phase him one bit. He told me that it was his favorite show, and 11 was his favorite doctor, so he wasn't going to let other kids not understanding keep him from being what he wanted to be. How did I get such a self confident kid?