Make an ancient Egyptian Headdress

Want to make an Egyptian-like headdress? Short on sewing skills?  You are not alone.  Machine stitching usually strikes terror into our hearts and fills us with dread like the coming of an ancient plague.   

We vowed to design and make this headdress while trying to avoid the hulking beast in the corner (the sewing machine) as much as possible.  The only machine stitching here will be of the unseen variety, where two pieces of fabric are sandwiched together, sewn and then turned right way out.  If there is any visible stitching, it's going to be minimal.

We had big ideas - we wished to make a simplified version of the gold and lapis lazuli headdress portion of King Tutankhamun's stunningly beautiful burial mask.  We needed to attempt some crazy alchemy, and turn fabric into solid metal and semiprecious jewel.  Or at least, try and make it look a little like gold and jewels, if we could. 
We had to use fabric because we wanted it to be as lightweight as possible - it's going to fit over a large animal mask which is in the works.  It still had to move; but it had to look like it didn't.

We’ve made two and a half of these now. Headdress number two (in the photo) suffered from me going insane and electing to sew each of the 75 individual coloured strips into tubes, instead of doing the ‘fold and press’ routine (so much quicker and easier). What was I thinking?  Why did I break our vow?

The cost for the fabric comes in at between $20-30, dependent on whether the fabric is at sale price or not.   
 

Step 1 Supplies

Inside lining:  about 1 metre of black lightweight fusible or iron-on interfacing. Get the good stuff. The cheap stuff we purchased only fuses in patches, if at all.

Outer lining: about 1 metre of black foil jersey, or similar fabric.

Coloured strips: about ½-1 metre each of blue and gold metallic-look fabric (we used foil jersey).  

Matching or ‘invisible’ sewing thread.

Sewing machine.

An iron.

Cooking paper.

A large sheet of paper, or some smaller sheets taped together.
Optional:  some Hobbyfill, wadding or cloth suitable for stuffing.

Comments

[tinker234]

wow i need to make something like this plus no sew that is a good bonus

[Dimensionz]

Thank you! There's a small amount of sewing; however zeebeez (see comments below) was able to replace the sewn parts with glue. Maybe try a spray-on type of glue?

[zeebeez]

I love this idea, thank you so much.
I am just about to attempt this for my son to wear at school.
Thanks again for the great idea :)

[Dimensionz]

Thank you so much for commenting! I am bad at sewing, so I'm very glad that someone else is going to attempt this - you'll do a much better job at it.

[zeebeez]

Well, after hours of work :( I can seriously say yours looked much better.
I forgot to buy the iron on backing and so ended up covering the fabric with glue, laying the strips down and then ironing over the top of them to get them to dry and stick securely.
The headress felt like I had used 2 full tins of starch on it, it was sooooo stiff lol, and someone asked if I had attacked a cushion cover (the cheek of it!!)
Ah well you can't win 'em all.
Still think it's a fab idea tho x

[Dimensionz]

Glue? A great idea! Was it that spray-on type of glue? I can see it being kind of stiff, but still an awesome and time-saving idea. You could maybe get around the stiffness problem by making small alterations in the design. You could have the front flaps swinging free, instead of being partially attached to the main body. And maybe the back could be shortened, so that it's above the shoulders. Not sure how to get round the (possible) stiffness in the curved area at the forehead though.