Last Thursday a note came home in my child's schoolbag.
Your child will be playing the part of KING HEROD in the school pageant.
Please bring his costume to school on MONDAY.
My first thought was 'Who the fuck is King Herod?!' I Googled him, and found out that he was the king who didn't want Jesus to be king.
Also, he had a beard.
First step - try not to panic. The note said not to go to any trouble and just use items I might already have. Errrm...I don't have a spare beard lying around and couldn't in good conscience use swept up dog hair, although I do often joke about making a luxury merkin from this bounteous resource.
The Crown
I went and bought a crown from the $2 shop. Off to a good start! When I got home, I glued the crown jewels back on the cheap arse crown. Also, despite coming from a $2 shop, the crown was actually $2.50. What is up with that??
The Tunic
I went through my material stash and was lucky enough to find some rich looking stripy material I bought years ago to make cushions with. Annoyingly the stripes went the wrong way so I couldn't just fold it at the top and cut a hole for the head to go through. I cut it in half, hemmed all edges, stitched up the sides (leaving room at the top for arms and room at the bottom for splits) and stitched across the top of the shoulders, leaving enough room for my sons head to fit through. This all sounds very easy but my machine was being an absolute bitch, so it needed careful handling. There is a bonus tutorial after the beard. Lucky you!
The Belt
I left it a bit baggy for ease of getting on and off (and also because I have no skills to do any better) so needed a belt to hitch it up a bit. I tried one of the husbands belts but it was too big to work properly. Mr BC had the genius idea of cutting a drawstring off an unused backpack, complete with easy toggle for fastening. It worked a treat!
The Beard.
Someone suggested that I buy a Santa beard and dye it with tea leaves, but that sounded like hard work, also, I am making a beard for a king, not a bum. My material stash wielded some lightweight grey carpet looking stuff, which was plan B, and luckily plan A worked, because that carpet would have looked like Grandpa Joe off the Simpsons. Plan A was to cut up half a brown T Shirt into strips that I would plait. I cut a small beard shape, and stitched the strips onto this. I fashioned a mustache and stitched this over the top, leaving room for my darling to say his lines (I mean a hole for his mouth). Then I sewed it onto some elastic and thought...I'm not gonna bother with those plaits, it looks pretty good how it is.
Ta-Da! Ladies and Gentleman, I present King Herod! This took me about 3 hours, at least 2 of which where spent sorting out the arsehole sewing machine. So here for your viewing pleasure is a mini tutorial on how to fix the lower tension in your sewing machine.
Top tension can be fixed by twiddling with the tension knob on your sewing machine, but when you read the instruction manual for lower tension it will say 'refer to the manufacturer'. All is not lost. It could be a variety of things, and this is what I tried before making an expensive phone call.
- Is the needle and thread correct for the weight of the material you are sewing?
- Re-thread the machine, top and bottom
- Use a better quality thread.
- Rewind the bobbin
- Clean out the area where the bobbin sits
- Change or adjust the needle, it might be inserted incorrectly.
- Are you pulling the material through too fast as it sews?
Points to ponder. Happy sewing!
Is your child in the Christmas pageant? What are your tips when it comes to last minute costumes?
xx