Fancy hat is Fancy!

I have made a bougie hat ala Henry VIII! I have conquered velvet and am all powerful!!!!!! (This is not entirely true but a girl can dream) All joking aside, I am very proud of this hat.

Now I understand that as novice I could have made the accessories before 2/27 but I wanted to try to push myself. I did make the “cabochons” prior to 2/27 but the majority of the V2 hat was made post 2/27. Before I explain my “process”, I will note that this was largely based off of the commercial hat pattern and put together with intuition .

Now – that commercial hat pattern is… wonky in my opinion. In my V2 (second attempt) hat there’s a whole section of the mid hat pattern that I simply didn’t use. It called for four and that was just too floppy so I used three. I did use an interfacing in the brim. blarg – because it’s not great to work with. When I make hats in the future, I’m going to try more HA process to stiffen the hat brim if possible. I also realized in V2 that it’s simply easier (and less painful) to jsut hand sew a good portion of this. So, regardless of my internal protestations, I hand sewed probably 50% of this hat.

Now is a good time to point out that previous me decided to use black thread on black velvet – current me does not like her very much right now but that’s not the point. I MADE A HAT! Lining is beige linen. You’ll see in the pics that I tacked the lining in place and then whip stitched it into place. Also – stitch hack finger lines are a life saver!

Alright so lets talk about those “cabochons”. I had some red and white rose beads and some grey ‘pearls’ (not real pearls because boy is bougie not actually wealthy). I had wire and some experience with wire/bead jewelry. You may be asking why red and white – well, we’re Concordians and have the little event called Wars of the Roses. I was the autocrat of it once and had some extra site token beads. I strung some pearls around the beads and estimated that I would need 8 but made nine anyway.

I tacked the brim to the upper part of the hat in 4 spots because I thought this would be enough… it in fact was not. I hand sewed the cabochons fairly evenly spaced around the brim This is when I realized I probably needed more tack spots. I then started to fiddle with putting the feathers along the brim – and fiddle more – and realize that I should have more tack spots. Pro tip: put more tack spots than you need AT THE BEGINING – not after feathers are in place. Ask me how I know?! &*T%* &$*$((*% !!!!

And then – after cursing, bleeding, some drinking and A LOT of fiddling I somehow had a hat.

Stay turned for further adventures over the next couple of weeks dear judges and readers. I suspect there’s more cursing involved. Also my bathroom is getting tiled now (for those who read the first blog post) so maybe only one more week of that? I hope.