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I'm very happy to announce that, after six months of construction, hair pulling frustration and finger-pricking detail work, my Marine Corps type M2 jacket is finally and completely finished.  There are a few imperfections here and there, but once everything is assembled and presented as a whole, they aren't terribly noticable; for being the first time work of a total novice, it's not half bad and I'm proud to show it to the board.



The tailoring isn't 100% match-perfect, especially through the underarms, and it's a bit snug through the waist and chest.  It's right that it should be though, the pattern was never fitted precisely to me.  It's not so snug that seams pull or snaps pop, and the M2 is supposed to have a good close fit, but it'd still be a good idea to back off the cheeseburgers a bit...



I was a little afraid that all nine ribbon bars would overpower the jacket front, but I think it all blends pretty nice.  Any more fruit salad would be overkill though....



I used synthetic white gabardine for my bib facings, as polyester can actually be snowy white and it's shimmer makes it snap even louder.



I'm still upset about not being able to get the silky snaps or accurate silver chain I wanted, but the stuff I wound up using does the job quite well.  I used a flattened curb link chain for the accents.  It's not as ornate as the original and it's a bit smaller, six links per inch not four, but at any sort of distance you can't really tell.



All this handwork drove me to distraction..tacking every chain link twice and keeping all stitches hidden, tedious is an understatement and boy were my fingers sore!  But it paid off in the end, so it was worth it.  With that, my project updates have concluded.  I have a service tunic from a previous project and though I still need to mod a pair of trousers, they won't meet the boards standards.  The next time you'll hear from me, I'll be posting photos of me wearing the completed uni.  Until October comrades!

Well okay, I do have a couple more update photos before the entire uni is complete. 

Presently I'm working on the trousers.  I managed to find a pair of black slacks with a grain pattern that matched my jacket fabric, so now I'm going to mod them with stripes.  I went the ready-made route for two reasons mainly.  One, building the jacket took longer than I expected, thus there isn't enough time to build a pair from scratch.  Two, the trouser pattern doesn't include pockets....Starfleet personel didn't have to worry about things like wallets and car keys, but I do.

This part of my project obviously won't meet this boards standards, so no pics of the actual slacks, but the stripes themselves are decent.

 

When I started the research phase of this project a year ago, I was under the impression that Bill's uniform from TUC was essentially a variant of Cartwright's, using the unique separated gold lines on the jacket front and trim work around the sleeve rank patch.  Then I discovered that Bill actually had his own uni, complete with unique rank braiding and these very complicated trouser stripes; (sigh) time to increase the budget.



Machine stitching soutache isn't the easiest thing to do, it has thickness to it and thus doesn't want to stay under your presser foot very well, but with some tweaking and patience it turned out well enough.  The second stripe, installation and trouser cuff mods should get done next weekend.  Compared to building my jacket, this should be a snap.  Just a few more days and it will ALL be done!