Mad Hatter: My first Hat

Materials

After I finished sewing my crown and brim together I finally had a hat!
The next step was to think about trimmings. I knew I wanted to a black and red piece because as of now I plan on using black and red for my senior collection next spring. Since I'm using a sort of traditional form I wanted to go nontraditional with my trimmings choices.

I trekked around London checking out a few different stores before finalizing my plans. I bought a red feather base, 3 sets of red coque feathers (the tiny red ones), and two types of ribbon. I ended up using the pleated looking one over the plain black ribbon. I decided to just keep the plain black elastic, I can always make a few simple skirts using it as the waistband material.

I started off hand stitching the ribbon around my hat. I used plain black thread and made sure it was tight enough but not too tight that it would alter the shape of my crown. I finished by overlapping the two cut sides so it appeared as if it was one connected piece.



Next I stitched my red feather base onto the left side of my hat. I then took a leftover piece of my ribbon and made a sort of flower out of it, stitching this over the bottom of the feather base and the seam of the ribbon. 

Finally I separated my red coque feathers and glued them to my feather base. I used my scissors to gently curl some of them so they weren't all the same height and going the same direction. 

Overall I am very  proud of my first ever hat. Everything but hand stitching was completely new to me and I think that I did a great job at challenging myself for my first hat.

Goofing off in class, wearing my hat!