Mac as King James I

On Friday, Mac's class had an assembly where they presented the story of Guy Fawkes. Mac played the role of King James I (who Guy Fawkes tried to kill when he blew up the Houses of Parliament). I won't subject you to watching the entire video here, but take my word for it that the program was excellent. These second-graders learned so many hard lines and did such a great job. I was very impressed.

We had to come up with a costume to represent King James I. Here's a picture from wikipedia of this illustrious leader:

We had the Harry Potter robe that I intended to re-purpose, but it was that frilly neck collar thing that had me worried. So I put out a request for help from my crafty friends on Facebook. The suggestions ranged from sewing one to having one made it here to using coffee filters to make one.

I decided to give the coffee filter idea a try. I bought a pack of frilly coffee filters (which I think I was supposed to use per the Facebook suggestion) and a pack of the flat, sort of triangular ones that you open up to put in the coffeemaker.

I ended up gluing several flat ones together to make a big circle and cut a bigger neck hole out once it was all dry. Then I made folds in the flat sides of the filter and kept it all clothespinned together for a week (to try to give the collar some poof).

I made three of them (because I figured there would be a tear between the dress rehearsal and the real performance and it was better to be safe than sorry). Mac probably should have worn more than one and I probably should have poofed it up a little before the performance, but here's a photo of Mac from the performance.

All's well that ends well.