I forgot to post up how I did my rather quick and dirty Team Fortress 2 Medic costume for Halloween. It required the use of sewing, which I got help with from my mum (luckily for me, since it required a sewing machine). I also had some relevant bits already lucky.

So, a quick run through, what I aimed for was to get just the costume part done for a Team Fortress 2 Medic – not really any props (such as the bonesaw, backpack or medigun). To get a half decent setup I’d therefore need:

• Thick rimmed glasses
• Lab coat, appropriately changed (patch, buttons, etc)
• Gloves of appropriate colour
• Trousers of appropriate colour
• Boots
• Belt and some attachments
• Shirt and tie of appropriate colour

Read on for how I did each part…

Thick rimmed glasses

Metal coathanger, bent with some pliers and my hands – took less then an hour. Used boltcutters to cut the ends, and made sure to file the sharp points off.

Lab coat

A few stages into this. First, getting it – I brought one on offer in Yoemans, a few sizes to big for me (to overlap the front). Cost £13 I think on offer. Then I removed the pockets…

…added the patch (put on with some fabric-glue-on-paper-stuff) from some cutouts of fabric my mum had, and finally my mum added the buttons I brought (because I was going to the Eurogamer Expo) and once I had pinned what I needed to be sewn back, did the sewing of it. Done!

Gloves of appropriate colour

I couldn’t find any red ones for love nor money. I found some blue ones in Wilko’s, at a pricey sum of around £4, ouch. Couldn’t find any bigger ones, and making my own were out of the question really 🙂 – weren’t bad though, and not too hot either.

Trousers of appropriate colour

I already had some of these. Both medics (red and blu) use dark blue trousers, which is handy.

Boots

Finding male boots like the Medic has is hard. Finding them at a reasonable price is seemingly impossible – although there were a few leads I didn’t check on, most shops didn’t have anything and online was a pain to search through (most being womens variants). I therefore went for the Wellies option, and got some at Milletts after looking around for mainly-plain black ones. Cost £10.

Belt and some attachments

I borrowed a wide brown belt from my Mum, although I found some alternatives in various shops and could have probably made my own out of fabric – since it didn’t really hold anything onto me.

The extra things I made out of cardboard (Magner’s box, one actual little box, and some part of a box of tissues) to make 1 belt buckle, and 2 boxes. These I attached to the belt with duct tape, which is what I made most of them out of anyway.

Shirt and tie of appropriate colour

Already had the shirt, the tie was £5 in Debenhams – hard to find a plain blue tie it seems.

Medic Sign

Lastly I made a medic sign, which was basically 4 bits of cardboard for bulk (part of an Amazon box for instance), 2 bits of white paper for the sides, 2 bits of red paper duct taped to the middle, and duct tape around the edges – took me a while to make at the last minute (30 minutes of duct taping), which was annoying but looked okay in the end. Would have made it bigged, or attachable to some kind of neck brace to have it above someones head if I had time.

Conclusion

All fun in the end – and pretty cheap to make (the totals above were around £30, given I had some of the things already). Big kudos to help from my Mum’s sewing (although I did the pockets myself), and it looked quite good too in the end – I’ll be reusing some of the stuff too (wellies are always useful), and keeping the rest should I reuse it. At least some people recognised it correctly 😉