The Activity Play

Merry Christmas! I hope you had a lovely time! :)

I've done a fair bit of sewing recently, but haven't managed to blog any of it. December seems to have passed in a whirlwind of sewing, birthdays, a holiday, illness and a broken laptop. Not to mention Christmas, itself!

I will get round to blogging my makes, and thought I'd start with the most Christmassy first, seeing as you'll not want to read about that mid Jan. Small Boy's nursery decided to do a Nativity this year (or "Activity Play", as he insists on calling it). He was cast as one of the wise men. Nursery asked parents if they could supply the costumes. Most parents did the normal thing, and went to Tesco. But my sister and I are not normal (my niece was to be a star), and were raised on a diet of Jane Asher inspired homemade Halloween costumes, so it was homemade all the way for us.

I decided to use my Liberty Kimono pattern as a starting point, and I used a blue poly cotton from IKEA, that I already had. The blue felt quite regal, but it needed a bit of blinging up (they are kings after all), so I paired it with a gold poly lining from Remnant Kings. I mentioned when I first made my kimono that it wasn't particularly large. Tellingly I did not size the pattern down for Small Boy, merely shortening the length and slightly raising the v of the neckline. I bought some gold braid to use as a tie belt.

There's not much to say about the construction. Seam allowances are overlocked. The bindings are machine stitched in place. The binding around the neck/edges is appallingly applied. It somehow got twisted, and so doesn't lie flat, but meh - it's a single wear kids costume. I left it as is.

I was a bit stuck about what to put on his head. I did consider a cardboard crown, but decided to go for more (very unauthentic) Arabic feel. I have no idea what you would call this style of headwear, but I can tell you it's made of a blue pongee (I love that word!) lining, tied in place with more of the gold braid. Both were from RK. I had all sorts of grand plans to use my overlocker to do a rolled hem on the pongee, but in the end time constraints dictated that I simply pink the edges.

The piece de resistance though was the beard. I have to admit that initially I had to google "wise man" to get an idea of what he should wear, and when I did so, I found this template for a felt beard, which I just had to make. It's made from brown felt and 1/4 inch elastic (again from RK). I am so pleased with it, and I feel it really made the costume, but sadly on the day, Small Boy refused to wear the beard on stage. It was a shame, but I wasn't going to push him into it. He was already nervous enough. He did amazingly well though, and said his one line really clearly.

 

I was really pleased with this make, especially when the Nursery manager didn't realise it was homemade, but the icing on the cake was that it won Remnant King's Merry Stitchmas Christmas competion, winning me £50 of vouchers for the shop!!! I am so pleased, but convinced that Small Boy's cuteness was what swung it! 

I'll leave you with a (blurry) photo of the wise man sans beard, with his younger cousin, a little star through and through!