Silver Cat Tea Party: Making Little Hats AKA a DIY Tutorial on Fascinators

I am so excited about the new little hat I made over the weekend!

I've slowly been compiling quite a collection of hats, fascinators, hair flowers, and hair bows. It was within this obsessive frame of mind that I saw Trashy Diva's blog post on their new fascinator collection by Louise Green, Fascinator Frenzy. These hats and fascinators were so whimsy, cheerful, colorful and just so fun!!! I was dying to get my hands on the Louise Green Cherry Doll Hat! But then I saw the price. :( As much as I do spend my money I just couldn't take the plunge. And so I was sadly resigned to the fact that I did not and will not own the Louise Green Cherry Doll Hat. But that doesn't mean I would have to go without some whimsy, cheerful, colorful and fun little hats and fascinators of my very own. I decided to make my own. And here friends is my DIY tutorial on the new fun little hat I made over the weekend.

1) Start with a fascinator base. I bought this teardrop sinamay from seller guigkat on ebay. I have also seen similar fascinator bases on etsy.

(My trusty bff Murkurie overlooks my work.)

2) If your fascinator base doesn't already have a hair comb, alligator clip, snap clip, headband, elastic string, or neck tie (some kind of way to keep the hat on) you will have to get one of these items.

For this fascinator I decided to utilize a hair comb because the base itself is not too flexible so a snap clip probably wouldn't be too practical, I didn't know how well an alligator clip glued on to this somewhat nonporous surface of the hat would hold, and I didn't want to have the visibility of a headband, elastic string, or neck tie on this particular hat.

3) I sewed on the hair clip to the back of the fascinator sewing around the base of the hair clip between the last two teeth on each edge of the comb.

4) Next... things to put on the hat! For this hat, in the spirit of the Louise Green Cherry Doll Hat, I wanted to make something with fake fruit. I decided to make a grape fascinator!

5) And yet, while I was out gathering my grapes I saw this peacock feather in the same aisle. I thought, how lovely these colors go together! And you may know from my other past posts, A Good Peacock is Hard to Find, and A Peacock for All Occasions, how much I do love peacocks!

6) I hot glued the peacock feather about halfway down the fascinator and at a jaunty little angle to give the hat some asymmetry, gluing the feather at about the eye of the feather and also at the base of the feather.

7) Then I sewed the feather on for extra reinforcement at the base of the feather.

8) Next I added the grapes. These I sewed on as well sewing around the stems of the grapes at the top middle of the bunch and also at the end of the bunch. I knew I wanted to have some of the grape leaves on with the bunch but the grape leaves that came with this bunch was super rubbery looking and not to my liking....