Gladys the Glass Head and the Micro-hat

This is made from felt and zebra print tulle.

 Love the big bow.

 Pretty bow.

 side view

I am loving these hats!!

Tiny Top Hat

Finished another hat. How cute is this super tiny top hat??  

Super cut hat from the back.

Another view.

Love that back view!!!

New Hats

Still riding the hat train. I finished this one last night.  It is unique.  I think I will give it to my daughter.  She loves to accessorize her head.  I think it will look great with her red hair.

For this piece, I started with a tear drop shaped form,  and covered it in black felt.  I then made a few fabric flowers added a pretty button and enclosed in all in a mushroom of tulle.

Here is Gladys the Glass Head, so appropriately named my my oldest daughter, modeling my latest creation. I had some trouble with the focus on my camera. I think the tulle confused my automatic focus.

Gladys form another angle. 

Vogue: 1940's Style Felt Hat

Isn't she absolutely beautiful???  Look at that hat!! So chic. So Dick Tracy!  I can imagine her in a black and white episode of Dick Tracy, tears in her eyes, chest heaving, breathlessly gasping in a slow southern drawl, "Ah thank someone is trahing to kill me." ~sigh~ I was sooo born in the wrong era.

This hat is a Vogue pattern from the 1930-1940's era. What is not to love.  I tried my hand at making one.  I am not 100% satisfied with the results, but still quite pleased.  I made it for a lady at church, and added a bit of tulle.

Here is my version:

My bow is a bit off kilter, but all in all, not too bad. I think I will still play with it a little more.  See if I can't overcome the crumpled look.

Flower hat Tutorial

I love vintage.  I have been on a vintage kick for about a month now. Actually, longer than that but I never had the nerve to make it and wear it, until I started loosing weight. Yeah, Baby! I lost 5" on my waist. Woot! To celebrate, I sewed myself a lovely dress and jacket. More on that later. My accomplishment today was a lovely black Flower Hat.  I dreamed it the other night. Yes, I actually dreamed that I made this hat one night.  It is not fun at all.  I get excited about a project and all night long I dream I am sewing and making my project.  The hubbs has even got up on some mornings asking me what I 'built' that night.  He never sleeps well when I am 'building' in my sleep. Evidently, not only am I building in my sleep, I am also, mumbling and twitching. He doesn't sleep well either. So, when I say I designed and sewed hats all night long, I mean just that.

The first thing I did was cut myself a tear drop shaped piece of buckram, about the size and shape of a shoulder pad. I also cut a piece of black felt about 1/4" larger than the buckram.  Save the felt, we will work with it later. I placed a wet wash cloth on a 6" styrofoam ball, then placed the piece of buckram on the wash cloth.  To keep the ball from rolling, I placed it in a small dessert dish.  I molded the buckram to accept the shape of the ball.  I removed the wash cloth and replaced the buckram on the styrofaom ball and let it dry.  After it is completely dry, it will regain its former stiffness.

Now for the felt. Important fact: Use felt from the bolt at a fabric store. Do not use craft felt. You will have wonky looking hat.  This is my felt piece. I placed the felt piece over the stiff buckram piece, smoothed it out, and and sewed it around the edges using a 1/4" fold.



Here is the underside where I stitched the felt to the buckram. This is going to be your hat!  That's it. That is all there is to it. Now, we will move on to the decorating part of our hat


I cut 3- 3" strips the length of my felt about  18" long. I cut 6- 18" long strands of 14 gauge wire. This can be found in the jewelry making section of Hobby Lobby. (I would love to live in Hobby Lobby)



The next step is to sew about a 1/4" seam down each side of the felt strip.  This will be done to all three pieces of felt.




After the sides are finished, make an itty bitty crook at the end of one of the wires.  Thread the wire in the space made by the seam.  Do this to both sides.


Cut the strip in half. You will have to use shears that are strong enough to cut through wire so you don't ruin your good scissors.








Fold the strip in a little raindrop shape. Tack the middle with your machine. Be careful not to run over a wire and break your needle.  Ask me how I know!!!!   After you machine tack the loop, you will hand sew the bottom of the loops and gather them until the bottom is nice and tight.  Do this to only 5 of the strips. You will save one of them for the middle.   


After you sew the ends nice and tight, take your pliers and fold the ends under so it looks nice and tidy.


See? Nice, neat, and very pretty. :)



Now lets take that last strip.  We are gonna fold him in half and sew him real tight like we did the bottom of the loops. After the middle is sewn tight sew both ends in the same manner.


Arrange the five loops on the top of the hat.  I put two loops at the front of the head, I thought that one in the front looked funny.  Tack the loops to the center of the hat.

Here are the two loop I positioned to the front. Now we will sew the loops secure to the rest of the hat. I left a tiny bit un-sewn right at the rim of the hat just in case I decided to add a veil.

Almost done!!! Take that last piece of felt strip. We are going to sew this right in the middle of our hat to cover up all that ugly hand stitching.
Sew one of the ends at the edge of the middle in a way as to hide the end. Now secure the middle of your strip to the exact middle of you hat.  Last secure the final end of you strip to the other side to complete a double loop.  Straighten all your loops and fix the loops so they arranged attractively on the hat.  Add a lovely hat pin and you are finished!!!!

If you are interested in purchasing one of this style hat, leave me a comment.  The hat is available for $30 plus shipping and handling.  I also have hat pins like the one featured in the picture for $10 each.

I added a bit of a tulle veil to it at the request of the young lady who bought it.  I think it looks very pretty.  You can't tell it from the picture, but there is little flecks of glitter in the veil.  Love it.

Recovering dining room chair cushion (tutorial)

I am soooo loving my new (inexpensive, yard sale find) dining room table and chairs.  I am still working on the chairs.  I am now to the 're-doing the cushion' part of the chairs. Strap on your seat belts, and here we go!!
     The first thing we have to do is remove the cushion from the chair.  Turn the chair over and look at the bottom. You should see some screws at each corner or thereabouts. My chair had four straight slot screws which I promptly removed with my trusty kitchen knife.  With the screws gone, the cushion should just fall out.
The cushion consist of 1 piece of board, a piece of foam, and 1 to several old fabric/vinyl pieces that were used to recover the seat in the past.  If you look on the bottom wood part of the cushion you will see where they attached the fabric with nails, staples, or tacks of some type.  My chair had small tacks, which I removed and recycled.  Remove whatever was used to attach the previous seat cover.  Use this piece as a template or pattern to cut your seat covering to the correct size.
     To attach the new seat cover, lay the fabric face down on a table or, in my case, the floor.  Place the seat, cushion side down, in the center of the fabric.  On one side of the seat, wrap fabric over the edge and put two are three tacks. I used the original tacks that I removed from the seat. Leave about 3" from the corner. Stretch the fabric taut and do the same to the opposite side. Secure fabric to all four sides, working directly across from each side.
    Now for the corners.  Take the corner piece of fabric and stretch it across the corner of the seat until it is snug. Tack that piece. Now smooth the side, folding the fabric over th piece you just tacked making a smooth fold. Tack this piece. Do the same to the other side of the same corner.  Continue this way until all corners are done.  Your seat should be done. If there are loose places, put extra tacks for added hold.  Replace chair to it original position and screw back into place. Woot Woot! Your seat is done!! Happy dance!!
     Pictures to come.

My 'new' dining room table and chairs

I just love good yard sale finds.  I am always trolling yard sales for what many other people would call junk.  Honestly, much of the time junk is what I end up dragging home.  I get excited, I buy, then I go home and think, what in the world possessed me to buy that???? I mean who needs other peoples used, broken, and damaged junk?  I can answer that question with one word. ME!!!! It helps that I have a handy dandy repairman at me beck and call.  Okay, more like my beg and call.
  The summer before last, yes it actually was that long ago, I found an old dining room table with four chairs.  They were asking $25 for the set, which I would have gladly paid except for the fact that I am a complete cheapskate. I offered them $15 for it and they agreed.  In absolute euphoria, I called hubby to bring the truck for an emergency pick up.  Since I was on my way to work, I gave hubby the directions, informed the yard sale attendants, and went on my way.  My day was bright and all was well with the world...   until I got home...
    The short drive home from work seemed to take forever. I was dying to examine my newest purchase.  I also wanted to call my friends and family to brag about the awesome dining set I got for a steal. Hey, I am only human.  Everyone loves to claim their right to brag at some point.  As I am stroking and rubbing my newest project, my darling hubby walks in looking supremely smug.  It was obvious he was gloating. It seems when he arrived to pick up my table and chairs, the person I talked to had stepped away for a moment.  My hubby talk to another person who was unaware of the previous agreement to sell the set for $15.  They sold it to him for $10.   Hence the reason for his disgustingly happy attitude. Now, most wives would be happy, and even proud. Not me. It irked me to no end that he got a better price for it than me.  There went all my bragging rights.  I am glad that we got it for such a great price, I am just irritated that I wasn't the one to make the awesome deal.
     Now that I have that part of the story out of the way, let's refinish this puppy!!!  Unfortunately, I do not have 'before' pictures of the table, but here is one of the chairs.  As you can see it is painted brown and has and ugly green vinyl covered seat cushion.  Loving the shabby chic look, I decided to try my hand at refinishing it to look attractively old.  (Is that an actual description??) Here's what the chair looked like before I executed my own particular brand of magic on it.  okay, maybe not magic, bit I am quite pleased with the  results.
   The first thing was to remove the chair cushion, which I did by removing the four straight slot screws from the underside. There was a lot of dirt and crud where the seat had been, so I took a good stiff brush and cleaned the area real good.  I then painted the chair with several coats of flat white paint.  I used leftover flat ceiling paint and an old low quality paint brush. I didn't thin the paint and the old paint brush left super high brush strokes which remained after the paint had dried. The chair had to be thoroughly and completely covered with the paint because at some point in the restoration, I would be sanding it and I didn't want to sand through the white paint.  I made sure to paint in the same direction with each coat of paint so that the brush strokes were the same every time.  After I had the chair painted with as  many layers as I thought I would need, I decided to put a wood stain on it. I know this sound weird, but my philosophy was this: If it is ugly I can re-do it.  I mean, it was only $10, right??
     So as I said, I decided to stain the painted chair.  I used Minwax brand stain in English Chestnut.  I stained the chair in the same direction I painted it.  To my utter amazement, the stain pooled into the grooves of the brush strokes and actually looked like wood grain. I stained heavier with some strokes and lighter with others until I had what looked like and stained bare wood chair.  In case it escaped the readers notice, I believe I mentioned that I like the shabby chic look.  Unfortunately for me, brand new beautiful stained wood chair is NOT shabby chic.  I was a bit put out with the results.  It looked like brand new stained oak. UGH!! I did what any self respecting junk lover would do. I brought out my secret weapon. SANDPAPER!  Yeah, baby! Let's see, whatchu got now!!!
     I sanded the entire chair until there was a pretty good bit of white showing through.  Then I sanded more heavily in the areas that would receive more use and be more worn under normal circumstances.  Ex. corners, edges, middle of the back...
   After I got the look I wanted, I wiped off the dust from sanding and put a coat of Minwax Polycrylic for a nice shiny finish.  I put about three good coats.  Here is the finished product.  As you may have noticed, I have recovered the seat.  I am in the process of making a tutorial on refinishing the seats. I hope to have it done within the next coupla days.
     I don't have before pictures of my table, but it turned out wonderful, too. I am so pleased with the results.