Seeing opportunities: turning thrift store finds into beautiful hats

I have seriously caught the hat making bug. I found a lovely Vogue pattern and wanted to make some cocktail hats:

http://voguepatterns.mccall.com/v8868-products-44627.php?page_id=181
Big problem: the materials listed are either not available or only through a whole saler. To make one hat I would have had to buy over $300 worth of supplies. After that I could make about 70 hats, but unless I have buyers lined up, that wasn't economically viable.
I am a thrifty person and since starting on this costuming journey, I have developed an eye for opportunities. While at one of my favorite thrift stores, I found a hat, a very ugly hat, but I realized that the materials were good quality horsehair.

Ugly thrift store find=great materials

I bought the hat and then took it apart. With just a little work, some feathers from my stash within a short time I had a lovely hat.

This type of hat is great for dance too as it is light weight and can be securely pinned.

Emboldened by this success, I went on to look at other types of hats. I found a wonderful blog called Hatstruck, and read several posts and then watched a great collection of videos on different hat making techniques. Sinnamay or hand woven grass makes lovely hats, but is very expensive. Hat blocks also can run upwards of $130 and my budget just isn't up to that.

A sinnamay place mat, some wooden bowls will become a hat

Thanks to the ideas on Hatstruck, I looked at the thrift store for materials for the hats, and found some handwoven sinnamay placemats, a wooden bowl and a little wooden lid with a lip. I drew a pattern, steamed and blocked the sinamay and then cut it out.

Blocking sinnamay

The sinnamay needs to be stiffened with something because it does not hold its shape very well. I have some rice starch which I am going to try but it may be that I will have to order proper sizing.
Just blocking the sinnamay with water and steam does not work long term. I got a ice shape but when I tried sewing it, the sinnamay just lost its' shape. So, I tried the rice starch. This is called Nori past and is used by the Japanese in making Kansashi flowers. I figured since it is used for giving silk (a natural fiber) some body, it should work on grass.  the only down side I can see is long term. Since rice starch is a natural product it could become moldy of the hat every got damp. Eventually I will order the "proper" supplies but since I am learning techniques now I figured this was good enough.

Sinnemay blocked with Nori paste

I took my foam head, covered it in cling wrap and then took the sinnamay, which I had first moistened with warm water, and pinned it onto the the head. Then I used a foam brush and brushed the Nori paste onto it and let everything dry overnight. This worked very well; the sinnemay was firm but still pliable. I then cut out a tear drop shape, rolled the edges to form a bound edge, made a wire shape and sewed everything together. I then covered the edge with some rayon ribbon. You could also use millinery gross grain.
While "researching" hat making techniques I came across some images of french ombre flowers. They are made from millinery gross grain ribbon and French wired ribbon. These items are pretty pricey to buy, if you can find them. My great aunt at one time made hats and I had a big box of trims in the cupboard. I never knew what to do with it but now, endless possibilities.

Huge box of vintage trims, millinery ribbon, rickrack etc.

I used some of the ribbons to make some ribbon flowers and then added this to the hat. I am still playing around with where to place the flowers and what I want the hat to look like but I think this is a pretty good first run.

Front view of the cocktail l hat with flowers

Side view of cocktail hat

I'll be trying some other techniques, shapes and ideas and I'; keep you posted.

Making hats for ballet

Just this week I made a hat for a dancer sight unseen.  When making a headpiece or any costume item choosing the right materials and colors is very important. The hat I was making was going to be brown with cranberry colored flowers. Sounds easy, no? but what is cranberry or even brown for that matter? Here is just a small example of shades of cranberry:

 If we are really honest though, color choices are much more like this; just look at the bottom row for "brown":

Since I did not have any fabric swatches I just guessed and made what I thought looked good; a bit risky but I figured if it looked pretty and had several shades, even if it wasn't a perfect match it would still look good. A good way to help with choosing colors and being on the same page when it comes to talking about colors  is to go to the paint store and select some of those chips.
Due to time constraints I had to go with what I had available so I dug into my stash and found some lovely velvets and some lilac and "cranberry" red silk. The dancer and I decided on the brown velvet for the hat base and then I came up with the idea to take silk organza and dye it several shades of "cranberry".

Fabrics from stash

 The next challenge for a ballet hat was its design.

Brown velvet, wired buckram shape and cranberry silk organza for the flowers.

No one wants a hat to fall off but on a dancer staying on your head is a minimal requirement not just "would be nice". A ballet hat has to be fairly strong too. A while back I purchased an e-book from Prudence millenry to help me learn how to make couture flowers and headbands. Using the methods describe there I made a frame of wire and buckram, covered it with some flannel and then applied the velvet. The book called for ice-wool, a short of wool knit batting but that is very hard to find and expensive so I substituted flannel as the flalene. I then dyed horsehair (a nylon, millenry mesh braid which is very strong but will blend into the dancers hair) and some mesh elastic and sewed that onto the bottom of the hat.
The flowers were made by hand, using bias cut tubing and hand cut petals. I also made some Yo-yo style daisies and sewed glass beads into the center to simulate stamens.
Although there are specialize sewing machines to sew hats, you can use a regular machine, I ended up sewing everything by hand to get the tight, clean finish I wanted. The book also shows that to get the best results, the hat shape should be hand sewn.

Hat after blocking

I then blocked and shaped the hat form. To do this I pinned the shape to a foam head and using steam, which softened the glue in the buckram, I reshaped it. Once the hat cools down, the buckram stiffens up again so that the hat keeps it shape. The horsehair on the bottom of the hat and the mesh elastic strap (which runs along the back of the head at the base of the skull) allows the hat to be pinned all around so it will not come off.

Close up of the flowers and hat.

I was happy with the completed hat and after testing it (sounds silly but I feel an once of prevention is worth it), it was packed up and sent off. Another busy week but certainly not dull!

Odette, Odile and Diana: more tiaras, crowns and headpieces

Gold lace and Swarovski hot fix crystal headpiece in Tanzanite and pinks.

The last few weeks have been so much fun for me with designing and making more ballet headpieces. I continued to work on the headpieces I had been making and finished both the gold and fuschia princess ones and the silver Diana one.

Silver Diana headpiece with large crystals AB and Swarovski ligh sapphire stones

Then I received an order for an Odette (white swan queen) headpiece from a dancer in California, so I finally had enough in the kitty to purchase supplies. When the packages arrived from the whole salers it was just like Christmas: all those gorgeous sparkly stones, real Swarovski teardrops, briolets and several gross vintage Precosia rosee montese and snowy white hackle pads. While waiting for my packages I had made the felt shapes for the feathers and my husband had made the wire frame.
The day the supplies arrived I set to work and by early evening I had a feather shape and the beginnings of the jewel:

Start of an Odette headpiece

Ideally, you need to try the feather shape on the dancer so that you can trim the feathers but since I could not do that I tried the headpiece on my daughter and then carefully trimmed, glued and sewed the feathers in place. The difference between this head pieces and the original one I made for Leila was remarkable. Real stones are just so much more sparkly and having the right shape to the feathers is more elegant.
Don't get me wrong. Leila looked stunning in her costume and the headpiece was beautiful but the new headpiece was just more so. Judge for your self:

original Odette headpiece

new Odette, sent to California

Now that I have so many beautiful supplies I am going to create another Odile (black swan) headpiece and I have been drawing designs for a slew of other ones. I am especially inspired to make some beautiful  fairy ones. I'll keep you posted on how that  goes.