Now that the dress is finished I now need to work on the accessories, so I bought this very plain white hat and I am now going to work on it to improve its appearance!!
I set to with the hat, removed the rather plain band and the internal petersham ribbon but leaving the millinery wire around the brim in tact, this just left me with the bare hat. I then spent another hour or so placing and pinning various bits of matching fabric to my dress onto the hat until I was satisfied with the design. Tracy had again made me a lovely embroidered embellishment to match the dress so I wanted to show this off to its best advantage.
With a plan in mind I set to and carefully hand stitched the fabrics and the embroidery around the crown of the hat taking the tiniest of stitches on the outside so as not to spoil the effect. This left me with rather a lot of stitching on the inside of the crown, this I wasn’t too keen on so I set to and made a lining for the crown with the silk habotai I had used to line my dress. I carefully hand stitched this into place and replaced the old internal band with a better quality petersham ribbon. This now in place I then carefully stitched the remainder of the fabric into place around the brim along with a few more beads. I finished off the edge of the brim with the white silk bias binding.
I love to wear hats and I am really pleased with the outcome of this one and think it shows off the dress to its best advantage.!!
