Fancy Hat

Last week my church had a Mother/Daughter tea. We were encouraged to dress up in a hat and gloves. Well, I happen to love to dress up and dont get many opportunities to, so I was all for that. Not wanting to spend 30 plus bucks on an ugly plain hat, I set off to make my own... because I love trying new crafty things. Since I didnt know what on earth I was doing this tutorial is not very good. Still, I thought I would give you a couple of the steps I did to make my own hat.
I found Buckram in Hobby Lobby. Probably not thick enough for a true Milliner, but it worked for me. I got a yard (maybe and a half) of it to play around with. I also bought a $2 straw hat that I was going to spraypaint and glue flowers and feathers too just incase it didnt turn out so well. I ended up using it as a pattern. I traced the brim onto 2 layers of buckram.

Side note: Cool thing about real straw hats is that they can be sprayed with water and shaped. I pushed in the top of mine because I was going to do something that I cant remember.
So I have a toilet seat looking piece now and then I cut out a circle in the middle, big enough  to fit my head, for the crown. I may have used the straw hat as a size guide too.

 

On the outside edge of those circles (remember I used 2 layers of buckram) I zigzag stitched some floral wire onto it. Floral wire because I didnt have any milliners wire, and it was it is pretty stiff wire. Green yes, but it didnt show in the final product.  I then cut some more buckram, about a 2 inch wide strip and whip stitched it to the wired circles. Hey! This looks like a pillbox hat!

 I also wired the brim, but I added the wire between the two buckram layers. This came in handy for shaping the brim. I wanted it to dip in the back and arch on the side.

I then covered the "pillbox" crown and brim with my fabric. A lovely Swiss dot-ish looking white fabric. I used Aleens tacky spray adhesive because I had it. Hard to tell here, but thats the fabric. Found it at Hobby Lobby also and bought a yard of it.

 Next day I sewed the crown to the brim. Around the edge of the brim I sewed on some white bias tape to cover the raw edges and wire. I then decided I liked the look of a black trim around the edge, but I had already bought white and sewn it on. I had some black, but it was narrow, so I only sewed it onto the top of the rim right on top of the white bias tape. (seriously lacking in pics because I had given up on a tutorial by now)
In this pic you can sort of see under the lacy netting where I took a sheer,wired, black ribbon and tacked it around the crown of the hat to hide the seam where it met the brim.

 

I then decorated it with stuff I had in my craft closet. The netting I had already and just sort of covered the brim with it and tucked the ends under the ribbon around the crown. I used more of the ribbon to make a sort of bow. I knew I wanted a flower too, but the black flowers in Hob Lob were ugly and looked like death. The white Lilies I got didn't look as good as I hoped. So I Googled how to make fabric flowers and that is what I came up with. I love it! I also added some long, skinny feathers that I had to give it some movement, and because fancy hats should have feathers. I didn't glue any of the embellishments on just in case I wanted to take them off later on down the road and change the look.

What do you think? Not too bad for not having a clue what I was doing!

Ooooh, I also won a prize in the "fashion show". A gift certificate to Charming Charlie, a jewelry/accessory store where everything is separated by color. Makes me so happy.