Bail Organa – Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith

Made for: Dragoncon 2021

Background: I talked Chase into doing this to match my Liberty Dies Padme.

Journal Entries: Read more at my Bail Organa tag

Patterns Used: McCall’s M4745 (Bail’s jacket and pants)

So Chase and I started planning for these costumes in late 2019. By Feb 2020 we’d bought the majority of our fabric and I’d already started doing the basic patterning on Padme, and Chase had started doing 3d modeling for the Bail parts. And then… y’know. I didn’t really dig back into until early 2021 and then it was very spread out.

Suit:
For Bail in general, we went with the colour/tone of the costume as seen in the Dressing a Galaxy runway show, which was a bit more saturated than what was seen on screen. The suit fabric we picked up was a pale grey-ish seamfoam twill. Originally, I was going to dye the fabric for the pants darker, since I think the actual pants are darker than the jacket fabric, but I ended up leaving it as-is.

I used the Civil War pattern linked above which was a good start for this. I didn’t really make any major deviations from the pattern except for fit. I did have to go back and add the piping on the sleeves because I missed it initially! Thankfully I had some piping onhand I could dye. The jacket is lined in a cotton. The pants I cut a little shorter and added elastic stirrups to keep them in place, and I think I need to go back an add pockets because he had nowhere to put stuff when he wore it LOL.

Robe:
The velvet we picked up in early 2020 as well and in spring 2021 I attempted to dye it a bit darker. It ended up just being way too much fabric to get through a hot dye bath – but I did manage to get it a shade darker and decided that was good enough.

As soon as Chase had his 3d printed mantle wearable, I started patterning this using some scrap lining material. It’s basically just 5 rectangles – 2 front, 2 small side, and 1 large back. I had JUST enough fabric for it all.

Chase thinks the cape is attached to the mantle but we decided to make it separate piece – I traced out the shape of the mantle and made an upper yoke piece from the suit fabric to sew all of the velvet to. Then put the mantle and the yoke on one of my dressforms and started pinning the pleats in based on the shape of the mantle. I added some shoulder pads I had on hand at the shoulders to make them a bit wider. Once I had all the pleats sewn in place on the yoke, I closed it up and added a hook and eye at the front. Then finished the hems by hand.

Mantle/Belt/Gauntlets:
Chase had a friend help him with the 3d modeling of the mantle and the gauntlets – the gauntlets came together beautifully, and they close with magnets. The first mantle ended up a bit too big, so after some size adjustments, the second version fit much better. He painted both the gauntlets and the mantle silver.

The belt is a cut of leather dyed grey, and the belt buckle Chase 3d printed.

Thoughts on Bail: Overall from my standpoint I was pretty happy with it – 2 small things to do, add pockets to the pants and maybe a thumb loop to the sleeves – he had a hard time keeping the sleeves in place while putting the gauntlets on and I think a thumb loop would help. The mantle kept wanting to ride up – so now after he’s worn it we are now considering going back to have the robe actually attached to the mantle like he originally theorized – the weight of the velvet would definitely keep the mantle in place.

He wore his vader boots with this, which at this point are 16 years old… and the zipper broke while he was wearing. So I guess new boots are in order too.

The Kenobi Variation:
In 2023 I was making a Breha costume from the Kenobi series, so I got to thinking, I could make a very quick, just-for-fun matching Bail costume for Chase.

Even though it’s not accurate, we decided the ROTS top, pants, gauntlets and belt were close enough to the look of the outfit he wore on the first episode of the Kenobi series that it would work fine. That just left the cape.

I had planned to just have him look for a fabric he liked next time we went to Joann, but while digging around for something else I came across a cut of grey stretch velvet I’d bought for Padme’s packing gown last year. I think it was originally around 3 yards, but I had cut pieces off to use as a mock-up and also strips for making my sleeve piping. The velvet was not accurate at all, but we decided we liked the colour, the look of it with the rest of the suit, and best of all, it was free.

So now I had to make this awkwardly shaped piece of fabric work. I draped it on his mannequin several times trying to figure out how to maximize what we had. I finally settled on how I wanted it and cut a neckhole into it.

Next I decided it needed a little stability, so I made a sort of half-vest out of scrap Crait Leia fabric. It’s attached to the cape at the neck and lower front just to help hold everything in place. I gathered the front edge, then finished all of the edges of the cape by hand. To finish the neckline, I cut a strip of pleather from his Darth Vader costume I was making at the same time and used that as a binding.

Lastly I added 2 loops of elastic at the bottom front, right under the gathers – I slide his belt through these before snapping his belt closed, and it helps keep the vest on in the right place and helps keep the tension in the gathers.

Fun little project and I’m glad we finally got to be Bail and Breha together – I’ve been trying to make that happen since 2005 LOL

                       

Visit my FAQ | Contact Me
Please note that none of these costumes are for sale! This is my personal portfolio. Thanks!