Sunday, November 20, 2011

Stocking Hat Embellishing

I've been selling quite a few embellished baby stocking hats over at Fabulous Darling, but a few were asking for some big girl sizes.  So I set to work on some more "sophisticated" embellishments for us sophisticated ladies.   (Pfff, I heard you cracking up over that one, I can be sophisticated now and then.  Just ask my mom.  Nevermind, ask someone else.)
Thank goodness for my beautiful friend Debra who was kind enough to model these for me at a 10 seconds notice!  This fabric flower was made with white fabric dug from my scrap pile.  It was a hem on a long dress I wore for my graduation, actually!  Yes, I really do save almost everything.

Quick version of how to make the big white ruffle flower: 1. Cut long narrow strip of fabric.  2. Sew a wide basting stitch allllll the way down the middle.  If I can handle that, so can you.  I'll put money on it.  3. Pull one of the strings on an end tight, until it cinches up, and keep pushing the gathers down until the whole things is cinched up.  You can spread out the gathers, to get the look you want.  4. Start in the middle and coil your ruffle around and around into a big flower shape.  In the words of my pal Heather, hope that was clearer than mud.
Here it is on a thick tan velour hat.
These beads are from a huge gaudy necklace I bought at a garage sale... bought for the beads of course!  Since my little Ty loves to be destructive, I handed him the scissors and to his delight he got to dismantle the necklace.  I hot glued them into flower shapes, and then for extra reinforcement, each bead got a dab of hot glue on the backs and stuck to the hat.

Then, after literally years of just talking about getting together to do some crafting at Marie's house, we finally actually did it.  And thank goodness we did.  Because Debra came up with an idea that makes me regret the one time I decided to quit hoarding everything in my hutch and sold most of my old doilies and the like at a garage sale.  She had the genius idea of cutting out the flowers in the middle of this table runner!  Oh the potential amazingness for these flowers!  Hats for one, as you'll see in the next pic, but also pillows, shirts, and whatever else needs a little sprucing up.
She let me have two of them to sew onto this here gray stocking hat.  Mmmm....  I like.  Anyone got any other ideas for these daintily made flowers?
If any of these hats trip your lil' fancy, they're for sale in Brooklyn, MI at Fabulous Darling.  See you there!

~~~~~Don't forget to enter to win a FREE Cutting Edge Stencil up to $50 value live now on Kammy's Korner!  Click HERE to get entered!  Giveaway ends on November 28th.




Funky Junk's Sat Nite Special

4 comments:

  1. These are so creative and beautiful.
    Please come share at:
    www.thezkids.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very clever and such beautiful results!! Glad to know that I am not the only one that saves e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.ng! Like trimmed off hems!

    ReplyDelete
  3. The facny trims really make the hats. Nice job.
    Audrey Z. @ Timeless Treasures

    ReplyDelete
  4. Another way to do the ruffle with the strip of fabric is to set your thread tension at the highest, and the stitch length at the longest then it ruffles it without having to pull a thread.

    ReplyDelete

Comments - Next best thing to chocolate! :) Please let me know you visited!