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By canpara
#4905044
I always liked Venkman's orange shirt from the fountain scene in Ghostbusters (1984), so I decided to identify the shirt, procure one and sew on the elbow patches.

Firstly, to identify the shirt in question, I did a little research to a void re-inventing the wheel. I consulted the following threads (pardon the pun) to determine that it is an L.L. Bean orange flannel shirt:
On eBay, I found an L.L. Bean soft cotton flannel work casual shirt in sedona orange with thick buttons. The tag identifies the shirt as 0 MT03.

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The front pockets have slightly slanted flaps, which may or may not be screen accurate (probably the latter). Similarly, the buttons are the same colour as the shirt (instead of a wood/beige colour). Nonetheless, this shirt looks very similar to the one worn in the movie, so I purchased it.

I love the feel of the shirt. It is fairly thick and it screams autumn. I realized later that it is the same shirt purchased by pOOpTarT.

Now for the elbow patches. For some reason, the screen grabs on KingPerformance's thread did not work for me at the time (they are working again now), so I located the scene myself and made my own. At first, I tried to take a screenshot from my phone using Amazon Prime Video, but that didn't work. I ended up taking two pictures of the images on my TV using my cell phone.

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I grabbed a piece of cardboard and designed a pattern by estimating the form and the dimensions from the screen grabs. I found this part to be quite difficult, often asking myself if the patches were too long, too thick or too narrow, or if the edges are too square or too round. It's really tough to tell from the screen grabs, so I did my best. In the end, I think my pattern is pretty close. Here are some pictures of the patterns I made with the dimensions written in pencil:

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Luckily, I had some scrap material that seemed to be ideal for the elbow pads. I liked the texture and the brown-beige colour seemed to be accurate (they seem dark in the pictures below). I traced the pattern onto the material and cut out the elbow pads.

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Using some needles, I positioned the elbow pads the best that I could, again using the screen grabs as reference. I chose to place the pads immediately above the long cuff seams, which coincidentally seem to align with my elbows. I think the pads seem slightly higher up the sleeve than those worn in the movie, but this is a negligible difference because I did not want to overlap the pads over the thick cuff seams.

The last step was to sew the pads to the shirt. This is the result:

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How does it look? What would you do differently?

I am pretty excited to wear it over my uniform in two weeks at the Calgary Expo with the Alberta Ghostbusters.
Last edited by canpara on April 15th, 2018, 2:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Matt Campbell, Cythusly, Hasford1978 and 1 others liked this
By Hasford1978
#4905306
That's pretty cool well done, great find on the jacket and great effort designing the elbow patches that looks awesome
canpara liked this
User avatar
By canpara
#4905332
Hasford1978 wrote:That's pretty cool well done, great find on the jacket and great effort designing the elbow patches that looks awesome
Thank you for the feedback! I hope the pattern will be useful to someone. I really should learn how to create a pattern on the computer so others can simply print one out.

Last weekend at the Calgary Expo, I wore my orange shirt when meeting Lea Thompson (Elaine McFly), Christopher Lloyd (Doc Brown) and Tom Wilson (Biff Tannen) of Back to the Future.

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Lea Thompson even gave the Alberta Ghostbusters some autographed pictures for our raffle draws. We managed to raise over $2,000 for the Alberta Children’s Hospital over the course of the weekend. Very nice people indeed!
By slicerd1
#4905382
I love these shirts! I bought one, to do what you did, but it's so friggin nice and soft and comfy I bought another. It's just great for wearing around the house in the winter months. Since I live in AZ I dont need much more than this most of the time.
canpara liked this
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