a little cocktail hat

Good Morning all

You may have notice that there wasn't a post at the end of last week, well mini apologies, but in truth I'm not really sorry, you see the weather here was lovely and I chose to sit outside and so I needed to be able to do something portable, small and visible in the sun.  The screen on the laptop would not have been up to the task I'm afraid, so I went with sunshine and not blogging, it's not like this is a job, I am suppose to do it for fun, so what the hell.  And I had a lovely time sitting with my head in the shade and my legs up on a chair and in the sun.  Although the garden still has no grass and looks like a building site, I pretended and it was lovely. The dog loved it too and insisted on joining me on the chair, although she is not the right size for a lap dog anymore. I tried to get a photo with her looking at me but she insisted on turning round as soon as I clicked.
And here one of the things I did out there, a mini little veil for the cake topper we will have, told you I wanted to get all the things I could get done as early as possible to make sure there isn't a big rush at the last minute. It has 5 little roses made with bullion stitch. cute heh.

Well what should I have blogged about last week, it might have been about this lovely little hat that I made to go with my flowery dress for challenge 8 of the HSF, or might might have been some new steampunk creation, or about underwear, which would you have prefered? Well since I can't hear you, we will go with the hat and next time I will tell you all about how the 1910s corset is coming along or more steampunk stuff.

 I believe I am really lucky to live where I live, within a really short walking distance we have areas of green in which you can walk for ages without seeing a house, especially when the tree are full of leaves and a short walk the other way takes me to shops and pubs and a thriving community centre. Best of both worlds.

 And these areas are still in the middle of the suburbs of Birmingham.

Anyway all this greenery often inspires me and I love the colours, the pinky/purple hue of the grass, so with my flowery dress being the same colours, and my needing a hat to wear with it, I was off.

I'm afraid that I forgot to take any picture before this one, to show the embroidery in more detail, you think I'd be use to this blogging life style by now. But here it is pinned on to the buckram base.

And a close up of the embroidery.

I had to stabilise the material to start with as it is a thin stretchy lycra fabric, so I simply ironed on some interfacing and that's why the underneath is white. Here you can see the underneath, the buckham base with the millinery wire sewn around the edge and the lining material which I attached with spray on fusible adhesive (not very well as you can see its coming off at that point).

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 Once I had turned the fabric over the edge to the underside and sewn it down I attached a bit of bias binding to cover the raw edges, sewed on a comb and attached some feathers in matching colours.

And finally with the dress, you can see the trim on the dress which I used to make the hat. Well I think it looked quite sweet, and I wore it to a work's cocktail party with Dr J. which was a very nice affair with pimms and canapes.   

Well that will do for today. This Saturday coming is 'Tiffin in the Park', a steampunk fair, I have a stall at so I'm off to create.  I have to say I am enjoying my life.  I hope you are all happy too.

Hugs and Kisses

Ally