So, I'm brand new to posting here at Craftster (been watching a long time though).
Anyway, a quick bit about me; I'm a burlesque performer. I also am obsessed with the 1960s, needless to say that's my lil niche in our show. I'm the psychedelic/60s/Beatles girl. I should also mention I'm obsessed with The Beatles (which you'll see more as I post). Even my own mother thinks I was born in the wrong decade.
Anyway, on the topic of burlesque...I had planned to debut a new number to the Rolling Stones "Sympathy for the Devil" I had the costume plotted out...except one thing I didn't have was a decent top hat. I searched and searched. They were all 50-100 dollars and with the economy being what it is, that's not feesible!
So, I decided "screw it! I'm making one"
Well, I have never made a top hat. I decided felt would be a good base and here's how I did it.
mind you, I also don't know how to sew well...so this was all done using glue guns (I had the burns to prove it!)
first, I took some stiffer felt and made the main part of the top hat
1.
I cut a circular base out of softer, more flexible felt
2.
After the 2 main peices were cut, I made sure they looked ok together and marked how tall I wanted the hat.
3.
Here's where I got stuck, so I put the project down for the night as my brain was fried from various other things I was working on, woke up in the morning and had it figured out. I took the top of the top hat, cut to the line I'd drawn out, a few lil cuts here and there (unfortunatly I didn't get a photo of that), then folded them toward the middle, one at a time, gluing the next peice to the previous. it wound up looking like this when I was done
4.
next, I took the base and measured the circumfrance of the top part. after I did this, I made a small hole in the middle of that and began cutting so that I was making triangles outward from the middle. and it looked like this
5.
next I took the base and started gluing those triangle cuts to the inside of the bottom of the top part (really it makes sense somehow).
6.
So, I had my top and base glued together, but the sides needed to be a little curled up to be a proper hat.
7.
I grabbed some fabric stiffener, curled those edges up and sprayed away! I let the hat sit for about an hour and this was the result.
8.
Now my base of the hat was done, but it needed to look a little less rough. Somehow I had some random black satin I hadn't realized I bought (love it when that happens!).
9.
So, with the fact I do almost all 1960's numbers, I'm always looking for psychedelic fabric to work into things. Since I was doing a number where I'd be portraying a devil, I needed red. I found a very interesting fabric and bought as much of it as I could. here's the fabric and my dog testing it out.
10.
The first thing I did with the fabric was I cut out a hat band and attached it to the hat.
11.
So, I had also bought some feathers. It seems like feathers are some of the greatest accessories to any burlesque dancer!
I attached those to the right side of the hat.
12.
Finally, I attached some elastic to the inside of the hat as a fascinator and I was done. Here's multiple views of the finished product (yes, there is an Abbey Road purse in some shots...my friends give me crap that that bag is everywhere I am).
button to nominate it!
