Millinery: attaching facinators with bridal elastic

Ok, so here’s a super-quick “I found these photos on my computer and haven’t posted them yet” post.  When I was talking to some folks about facinators, they were just going to sew their combs onto the hats.

Comb in the bridal elastic

Well, these plastic combs are .. cheap.  (And the good metal ones are hard to find.) Cheap combs tend to break over time, which means you’d have to unpick all of your sewing and then re-stitch a new comb in to wear your facinator.  Instead I recommended they get bridal elastic.  Bridal elastic is used for all of those insane little buttons on the back of formal dresses, so instead of having to make a whole bunch of little cord or fabric loops, you can just use this trim – with the added benefit of it being elastic to make doing those little buttons up and undoing them just a little bit easier.  It comes in white, off white, and black.  It might come in other colours, but I’ve never seen it.. (let me know in the comments if you have!).

So..you just cut a length of the trim, finish the edges with fray check and a few whip-stitches (the cheaper trim tends to unravel easier than the better quality stuff.. you’ll see as soon as you cut it…) and then sew the elastic trim onto the hat -then just slip the comb through all the loops!  If you wanted, you could even put elastic on more than one side, so you could change how the facinator sits…

Comb inside a hat with the bridal elastic

In case these hats look familiar….. they are the mini tricorns I made a while back in Red and Teal. Of course, there are lots of ways to attach facinators, this is just one of many!