Crow

Making the Regalia

It just takes a few steps to make regalia: designing, cutting out, and sewing together. For this project I have to do the same thing for a Native American regalia, but how I did mine was a little different. For the first two weeks of my time to do the project was spent begging my mom to go to Jo-Ann Fabrics to get the material needed for my regalia.

First we went on the computer to see Crow Native American regalia designs and pictures of them. We saw this one wacky photo, of a Native American who was in red, blue, green and yellow, but we didn't want to do that so we just decided to get plain brown and white. We also found a photo of a Native American wearing a white rope design around his collar and we decided to get the right material for that. We thought a really cool part of the regalia was the headdress so we knew we had to get feathers for that too.

Finally on the third week, we went to the store to get our materials. Then when we got back home, my mom told me that I should start decorating the white part of the sleeves that go down my shirt. That took about a week.

Then on the last night we outlined my Tae Kwon Do uniform with a marker, and put the shape on the brown material. Then we put glue on top of the marker and then we folded the other half on top of it so it was almost like having the regalia done in just one week. I tried the pants on, and then we heard something rip. It was my pants!

Then the next morning (after Mom repaired the rip in my pants) Mom asked me to decorate the leftover white material because we didn't have enough brown material to do the headdress with it.

When I was done with that we took some black and white feathers and I arranged them the way I thought was good for the headdress to be. I didn't put it in a pattern because I knew that the Crow Native Americans just put the feathers on their headdresses randomly.

After we glued the feathers on the headdress, Mom sewed the white material (that I talked about in the beginning) on to the sleeves of the regalia, which I think personally made the regalia look better. Then Mom pinned the rope necklace to the regalia and I sewed it on. Then we sewed the edges of the regalia to hold it together. After that we were pretty much done with the regalia!

But wait! I still need to tell you about how the regalia looks! The regalia's main colors are brown and white. If you look closely enough on the pants and arms, you can see very faintly the yellow, blue, and red patterns about two inches away from the fringe. Yes, I know, I know, about the fringe. The fringe goes up the sleeve on the outside all the way up to my shoulder, and the fringe at the bottom of my sleeve goes up an inch and a half. The same thing with my pants, except that the fringe on the outside goes up to my waist.

Bibliography

Google Images.
<httpL//images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&q=Native+American+and+Cow&btnG=Search>

Native Tech: Native American Technology and Art-Cultural Areas and Locations of Tribes with Illustrated Clothing.
<http://www.nativetech.org/clothing/regions/regions.html>

Native American Unit Home - Regalia