The Guybrush's Coat From an Old Blue Lab Coat!

This week, it'll be the percent (100th day before the Baccalauréat) and I decided to cosplay Guybrush as he appears in the second opus of Monkey Island, I've already done the Pirate Boots, but then I had to do the hardest and most important point: the Guybrush's coat!

So at first I checked some cosplay on the Internet, luckily the MKII's Guybrush is the most cosplayed one, but the coats were always self-crafted. When I say crafted I mean they all took some blue cloth and they made the whole coat by themselves. I know that is the very definition of "cosplay" but I only had less than a week and I didn't feel like a great tailor :/ . So I decided to do it myself from old stuff.

Step 1: Get the Old Stuff

So for this coat, all you need is this:
- a blue lab coat (I used an old blue lab coat that I found on an old clothes pile, I really don't know how much a lab coat cost but it won't be really expensive)
- leather (I still don't know how/where find any piece of leather because I have a cardboard box full of leather at home, sorry I can't help you more about this :/)
- a cutter (or some really good scissors! Cutting leather with scissors could be your worst nightmare on this instructables)
- a sewing kit (including big needles and a thimble)

and optionally:
- some beige/yellow (and big) shirt buttons (at least two for the back, up to seven if you want also change every buttons of the lab coat)
- some light yellow cloth (unfortunately, I didn't have any yellow cloth :( )
- double-sided tape (if you're as lazy/hurry as I was)

Step 2: Leather Side: Take the Mesures

If you have long enough leather strips to cover both button sides of the coat, just cut holes for the buttons and the buttonholes (it's only cosmetic, you'll never close the coat anyway) then sew/tape all this in one go and skip to the next part.

If like me, and you probably would, you don't have long enough leather plates, then measure the distance between the buttonholes and cut the leather on little stripes of this length (but broad enough to cover all the button part).

Step 3: Leather Side: Sew Leather on the Edge of the Buttonholes

If you don't want to have blue holes scattered on your leather strip, you'll have to sew the leather scraps on the edge of the buttonholes.

It's a pretty short step, just start the sewing by sticking the needle inside the coat then pull up the needle and passing it through the buttonhole, be sure to have large enough leather scrap to put them above the top of the leather stripes, especially if you're going to tape the stripes (I didn't have large enough leather scrap sewed on buttonholes so it's the stripes which are over the scrap and it looks awful).

Step 4: Leather Side: (lazy Step) Tape the Stripes

So if you're courageous enough to sew all this, then sew every stripes. It'll be really long but it'll be more reliable. I was way too lazy to sew all day so I taped them. If you do so, you'll still have to sew some recalcitrant parts (some folded stripes...).

Step 5: Leather Side: Redo All This...

Yeah well the problem with every symmetric clothes is that you'll have to do things twice. The button part is a bit harder than the buttonholes part because you can't pass through the buttons to sew the leather scraps. But otherwise it's almost the same.

If you have some beige/yellow buttons, you can replace the blues one to make the coat looking more like the ingame one.

Step 6: The Cuffs

Well in fact, in the game, Guybrush have hanging sleeves. But lab coat don't have hanging sleeves (because it's dangerous on work and all that). So I choose to make cuffs like in some fanarts I found.

First roll up the cuff, wrap the leather around and notice where you have to cut the leather, then cut the leather (a bit long and painful if you're using scissors like me), tape it with the double-sided tape and sew the external part of the cuff. I think that pictures explain everything.

Step 7: The Back

Hang on! It's the last step!

If you have some light yellow cloth (that I unfortunately don't have), it's time to sew it in two stripes along the bottom of the coat.

Then you'll have to cut the back of the coat in two slit (actually, there is three slit on the coat (two on the side and one little right on the back, but because I had to cut the two first more close of each other, I finally didn't cut the third in the middle of the coat). Don't worry about making an hemstitch or other trick to avoid the coat fraying because lab coat are made of really reliable fabric.

When you've finished with the slits, sew two beige/yellow button on the back just above the middle part (like in the picture), then you're done with crafting!

Step 8: Look and Wonder How Guybrush Could Come Through the Whole Game.

Now that the coat is done, you'll have to find other parts of the cosplay like:
-a white shirt
-a leather strap (I taped some leather on my camera bag strap)
-a large belt (I didn't find it, I hope you'll be luckier than me)
-black trousers (black jeans are fine)
-Pirate Boots

And that's it! you can now stop telling on how/why/where/when you killed LeChuck and start searching the legendary Big Whoop.