You might remember the red tricorn mini-hat I made a while back. This fascinator uses the same red silk and black spiderweb lace (actually some of the scraps left over from that hat!) but is distinctly different (and was a LOT faster to make!).
This fascinator started with just a simple circle of buckram, sliced to make a gentle cone. I trimmed the buckram with wire with hand stitches (like many of the other hand-made hats I’ve made recently. Check the Millinery tag for a few more photos and instructions.) and then covered the outside with red silk, and the inside with grey wool felt (yardage this time, not part of a felt hood). Both the silk and wool were seamed to get the shape of the gentle cone.
From there I covered the red silk with the black spiderweb lace. Since lace has a slight stretch, I didn’t need to seam it to get the shape. From there I bound the edge with black grosgrain ribbon.
At this stage the fascinator was mostly done – I only needed to hand-stitch two loops of elastic into the edge and slide in a hair comb to be able to wear the fascinator. I then added a ‘poof’ of hat veil material (it’s a net with a much bigger hole than tulle and a heavy-thread edge) and a tiny plastic Halloween spider. The spider is kind of goofy actually – if I ever run across a silver and red enamale spider broach or something like that, I’ll likely swap it out – though this fascinator likely isn’t something I’d wear for ‘every day’ but rather for costume or for… well… Halloween!
Very ingenious, but do you make any money from all this work or is it a delightful hobby?
It’s just a hobby! I used to work for a designer where I could put some of these textile ideas to good use, but right now it’s just for me!