My Hat

I have been obsessed with this hat. Seriously.

 Ever since I watched North and South I've been trying to find this hat.

I mean, it's perfect for me! I have thick hair and I usually wear it up. I needed a hat that I could wear with my hair up. But no Margaret Hale hats were to be found...anywhere. And trust me, I really looked. I found other kinds of hats and bonnets that could be worn with hair up, but they weren't IT.

 

My opinion: What you can't find, you can create. 

I found this hat at Walmart for $8.00 and I figured it was perfect for experimenting on. (It didn't come with the white line. I did that. I forgot to take a 'before' shot.)

And it was the right color. I must say, I am ridiculously happy about how it turned out. I love my hat!

Here's what I did. 

I needed to get rid of the hat depth. So I measured roughly where I wanted the hat to sit, and I sewed around the hat on a very dense zig-zag stitch to make sure it wouldn't unravel when I, well, cut if off. :-)

 It was a triffle scary, chopping a perfectly respectable hat apart. I was thinking, "Well, here goes $8.00." LOL.

I then got rid of the extra.

 I took the brim and soked it, just for a minute, in some water with corn-starch in it, hoping to help it stiffen up. I then ironed it flat because the hat in "North and South" has a pretty stiff brim. 

Straw stays wet a long time though and I don't think wetting it helped with the stiffening up part. It made it easier to work with, if nothing else. The straw was bendy. Then I cleared out as much of the residual copped-off bit from between the brim and the ribbon part and pinned the shortened hat back in.

 (the ribbon started to come away from the brim. It had been hot-glued originally, so after I sewed the hat back on, I eased some hot glue back under the brim to make sure it was pretty secure.)

(It's funny how getting the brim whet made the hat look like it was two completely different colors.)

Sewing the hat back together was a little tricky. I broke a needle on the machine and had to search frantically through the sewing box for another...the last one.  My thread kept breaking. Every few inches it would just snap, and I don't know if the thread I was using was cheap or if the hat was just so rough that the thread just wore out. Anyway, sewing around the hat was hard. But lookie at the results! It worked! 

After it was done, I got heavy-duty starch and went to work. I ironed and starched and ironed and starched andironedandstarched! It stayed stiff for a while after that, but the starch doesn't last. My brim starts to go a tiny bit limp. but that's okay. 

Over all, this was a fairly easy project. It only took me about three hours to do it and on my first try, even. I think if I do this again, I'll be faster than that. I have a feeling that this wont be the only hat I over-haul. :-)

Well, I hope you enjoyed that. 

God Bless!

Amy

Brave.

My sisters and I went and watched Brave today. It was very fun. First, we've all been looking forward to seeing this movie for months and in honor of the occasion, we all wore our hair down so it could be sort of like 'Brave-ish'. All my sisters have long hair and most of us have curly hair. We made something of a spectacle. It was fun.

I really enjoyed the movie. I thought it was well done, (all the hair was lovely! Especially Marida's, the red head. :-) and the story was very sweet. There is a rather interesting plot twist and it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. Unlike most pixar movies, this one really leaves itself open to a second one, in my opinion. I felt like there was more story wanting to be told. The characters weren't done. At least, Marida's character definitely has more to say. I am really hoping they produce a sequel.

Brave was a beautifully filmed, creatively written story and I will definitely be watching it again. In fact, I think I'll enjoy it more the second time. There were a few scary parts which resulted in my little sisters climbing up on some of the 'big' sisters laps in the theater for comfort. ;-) What can I say? They get very involved. This song is from the move. It's very pretty.


God Bless!
Amy

Catch-up.

Whew...I have not posted in a long time! So sorry. I am going to post at least once a week and make twice-a-week posting my goal. I love goals. :-)

My family made our fist trip to the beach a few days ago. Mountain lakes are usually pretty cold and Lake Tahoe is no exception. It was cold. We had fun. We don't usually go to the beach during the day because of the crowds of badly dressed people that flock there. We like going in the evening. Five-thirty or six pm sees most people heading home. That's when we take over. :-) It's really a great way to end the day. Swimming is so refreshing.

And I had the opportunity to watch "For Greater Glory." I am not going to do a big review of it, though I will give you a few links to good reviews. But I did want to at least say how wonderful I thought it was. It was amazing...and sad. And beautiful. Andy Garcia is at the top of my favorite actors list currently. It's the sort of movie that makes you determined to be a better, braver, less complaining person. It is a war movie (with an R rating) but let me say that for a war movie, the violence was handled very well. It wasn't nearly as gory as it could have been, but the story is a bit gritty and there are some pretty hard parts to watch. I personally think it could very well have been rated PG13 and have been fine. Anyway, it was one of the best movies I've seen in a very long time. I loved it. It's one of those movies that is so amazing, I can't fin the words to explain it. I cried almost all the way through it. And I fell in love with a lot of the characters...especially this little fellow.

Rush Limbaugh did a very good review HERE
And Maria at Fire, Fleet, and Candlelight will have one soon so check for it HERE.
That's about the gist of it. I will post at least once a week from now on! (You all believe me, right?:-) God Bless and take care! Oh, and watch the trailer. Even that makes me cry! Viva Cristo Rey! (Long live Christ the King!)
Amy

Home! And tutorial...

I am back in California! It's very nice to be home.

Anyway, I want to let you listen to a few more songs just to sum-up my Irish/Scottish music spree and then I'll do my hairpin tutorial.

Silly Wizard does a few of my favorite Scottish songs. This one is awesome, but it is better if you listen to it with lyrics otherwise it's a little tricky to understand. This video does include the lyrics in the description area underneath the video if you go to youtube. :-)



And this one...lovely!


And perhaps my favorite. It's not technically Silly Wizard. It's Andy M. Stewert all by himself. If you don't listen to the other songs, listen to this one. And really listen. It's a story...a very sad story.



Okay, so. Hairpins. It's easy! You'll need.
Artificial flowers.
needle and thread.
Beads (optional)
Hair pins or clips of your preference.

Clip the flower off the stem as close as possible without causing it to fall apart.

I've used both kinds of these hairpins, so it boils down to your preference. This particular flower looks really  good with a bead added to the middle and it can really change the look of the flower, depending on the bead color. I went with a little gold bead for this one. 
So, thread your needle and sew through the bottom of the flower, come up through the middle and string on the bead. (That's not as confusing as it sounds. :-) Sew back down, and come up, through the bead, and down again one or two more times, kind of like sewing on a button, to make sure it is secure.

 Now you can sew it to your pin. Basically, through the flower, around the pin. Through the flower, around the pin. Over and over again until you feel like it wont go anywhere. Tie it off.

I put a drop of super glue on it when I'm done, so that it doesn't slip around on my pin and so the thread doesn't wiggle lose.

I've had fun experimenting with different kinds of flowers. Some I love, and some I'm not super wild about. They all do look pretty, though. It's hard to get a flower to not look good in your hair! lol.

Some flowers have more of a plastic base and can be trickier to attach without destroying. Like this one.

had to sort of tack the flower together after cutting it as close as I could. I just went up through the middle and off to the sides a few times to hold everything in place. then I slid my pin under the plastic and the 'leaf' layer and finished sewing till it seemed secure. Again, a drop of glue is a good idea. This flower is definitely prettier in the hair. It's a little 'blah' by itself.

Basically, just experiment and figure out how you like to make them, and what looks are your favorite. You can do this with big flowers too.

I hope you were able to at least get some idea's from this, even if my instructions were lousy. Flowers are such a fun accessory and it can be fairly cheep to make these. Hobby Lobby has a nice flower selection and you can get some really pretty flowers. So, go and try this out!
God Bless!
Amy