Wise man/Magi #2 was our tallest actor, and the overall design was elaborate. With the beautiful watercolor blue batik and the white accents, I wanted this to have a strongly masculine feeling to it.
I wanted to play with couching on my Bernina 790+ Crystal Edition, so I used presser foot #43 to ‘couch’ La Espiga #18 cord onto the tunic. First I did a trial run on scrap fabric from my cabbage bin. I’m glad I did, because I worked out the mistakes there first, before couching on the beautiful batik. This cord adds texture and depth and picks up the gold in the fabric.
I didn’t have enough batik for the entire tunic (did I mention this wise man is tall?), so I made the upper portion of the sleeves from the cloak fabric. This upper sleeve will be hidden when he wears the cloak anyway. I added gold gimp trim to create a cuff on the sleeve. Then we began to work on the beautiful sash.
I used my Bernina 790+ to embroider this gorgeous design onto white dupioni. I left the embroidery stabilizer behind the stitched design, to create more structure to the sash. This way, the sash won’t crumple and wrinkle as it is worn. Chloe embellished with the sparkling crystals to give the lustrous, bejeweled look.
The cloak – made of teal matte satin – has side openings up to the knee, which allowed me to use less fabric, and yet he still has plenty of movement for walking across stage and for kneeling by the manger. The sleeves have a cascading drape, and I sewed a gathering stitch so that the front of the sleeve always remains above the elbow, showing the tunic cuff and gold gimp.
The neck has a wide white dupioni bias, which causes it to stand up – reminiscent of a modern priest’s collar. The sleeve and cloak hems have a decorative stitch edge. And I sewed on a white La Espiga #18 cord for a pop around the vest opening and above the shimmering blue foil dragonfly wing texture fabric edge.
Creating the hat was a challenge! I asked the actor to try on this cap, then we adjusted the strap at the back to fit his head. At home, I started by frog-stitching (otherwise know as ripping out the stitches – get it? Rrrrip-it, rrrrip-it) the baseball cap to remove the bill. Then I sewed the cap edge back to the cap without the bill.
I made a fabric ring of buckram (for stiffness and shaping) and white dupioni that would fit around the cap, and the actor’s head circumference. Then I measured the diameter of the top of the hat opening, cut a circle of buckram, and sandwiched it between two layers of dupioni.
Once I had this circle sewn, I trimmed to a quarter inch seam allowance, then sewed the circle to the top inside of the ring.
With the buckram and with the shape, the hat will now stand on it’s own, but it’s very lightweight. Now that we have the base of the hat, I began to construct the details to make it look like a wrapped turban. The wraps are really three long rectangles sewn on individually. I added a folded piece of white felt into the rectangle, to give a fullness to each rectangle and make it look like a folded, wrapped turban.
Chloe glammed up the front of the hat with gems and jewels.
The final touch was attaching a length of white crystal organza to the back of the turban.
Here’s my original sketch and close-ups of the fabric. Turned out a bit different from my plan, but I like the end result!
