Crown and Brim

I have decided that the fashion fabric of my hat is going to be blue cotton satin from the stash. Actually it is an old IKEA curtain I bought ages ago and never used for my windows... Blue is my favorite colour and most of my selfmade dresses are either blue (all shades) or black, so I figured blue is a good idea.

Here are some process pictures from the last two days:

 To attach the fabric to the crown tip I glued it in place so it stays flat while sewing around.

 To keep the fabric flat at the sides I clipped the seam allowance a few times. My stitches run about 5mm underneath the edge so they won't show after attaching the fabric to the sides.

To do so I pinned the seam allowance of fabric on the sides with the right side in and stitched around the crown again. This time I did it as close to the tip as possible. Since the hat wire is attached to the tip at that place, it was not so easy to sew so close to the top...

 Here is the finished crown from the inside. Do you see the blue line above the wire? That was my first line of stitches. If you enlarge the picture you may be able to see the second line aswell. It is hidden behind the wire.


After finishing the crown I continued covering the brim. To do so, I stretched the fabric across the brim and piunned it in place before using my machine to sew it to the brim. The under side is glued in the same way like the muslin before.

This time I cut away the seam allowance very carefully to avoid another hole... After doing so I attached a self fabric bias tape to the edges. For this I used the machine after gluing the tape to the edge.

 

 The next step was attaching the crown to the brim. To do so I used a curved needle and double thread. I am afraid pinning wasn't possible at this stage, so I just kept sewing around...

 And it worked! The crown matches the brim exactly. I was worried before, but now it looks like a real hat. The last step before trimming was to sew in the lining. I used a leftover taffeta from a gown a made a couple of month ago, which matches the blue of the cotton satin just fine.

 

 

 Tadaa! It is a hat!
See the fuzzy part to the reight? That is where I joined the bias tape and I couldn't manage better. I will cover it with lots of loops and bows. Maybe I will start with the trimming after work taday.