More Hatmaking....

OK. When we stopped yesterday, we had the crown formed and I told you how to cut out the brim. Incidentally, you can cut the brim piece any shape or size you want. The one that I put in the instructions was just a random size. You can draw a circle or an oval and just make sure that you use a size for the center hole that will fit around the crown and overlap just a smidgen.

I messed up and didn't take a photo of the brim being added while still on the form. I think that you can get the hang of that by just doing it though. I did cut off the bottom two layers on one side of the brim overlap so that it wouldn't be too thick in that area.(see bottom right) After the hat was dry I took it off of the form and here you see that I have trimmed about half of the excess crown from the inside. The edge of the brim is a bit rough. Adding braid or even some of the threads from the fabric itself to the edge with glue will take care of that.

Always start and finish the braid at the point that you will be putting your decorations. Those will cover the joining. For the bow, put a small spot of quick grab where you want the bow to start. Lay the end of your silk ribbon on it. Loop the ribbon back on itself and glue to the same spot. Keep looping it to opposite sides and glue each time in the center. Only you can decide when your bow is full enough. I usually do 6 to 8 loops. Keep maneuvering the ribbon clockwise with about the width of the ribbon between the loops on each side. Cut it off. Then cut some tails as long as you want them and put glue on the end and tuck them under the bow. You can decorate with roses and feathers. There is a tutorial for the roses here. http://caseymini.blogspot.com/2008/08/roses-for-mlady.html

Here is the yellow and green one that you saw yesterday. This one has everything but the kitchen sink on it for decoration. It has roses and Ostrich feathers. The Ostrich feathers can be curled by running them over the blade of your scissors like curling ribbon.

Experiment. I am sure that you will find that decorating the hats to your own taste is more than half the fun.

One of these days I will show you how to do silk and velvet bonnets. I will let you mess with these for a while first though.

The only other thing that I have to report today is.....My miniature bookcase is clean.....And full! I dragged all of my miniature, decorating and furniture making books out and put them together in the bookcase in our bedroom. If I find any more I am in trouble! They just fit. If I do find more(and I probably will) the two mini scenes will have to go live somewhere else. As it is, all of my costume and miniature doll dressing books are going elsewhere. Wish me luck!

I am in the process of reorganizing all of the bookcases in the house. I found a couple of books on bead work this morning that I didn't even know that I had! It's definitely time to straighten things out when I buy a new book and it disappears before I even get to read it!

I am off to do more book moving.

See you tomorrow.