Sinamay experiments: a simple toque
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for the full pic and a description of how I made it.
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The end result
The basis of this is a mould made
from artists' plaster-bandage, roughly the size and shape of the top of my
head, smoothed down a bit with sandpaper & DIY filler and painted to
seal the surface.
Then I used this to shape the crown -
it was just a question of damping the sinamay and stretching it and
smoothing it over the mould. If you have a proper hatblock you can pin it,
but being a cheapskate I had to use a combination of tucking the edges under
and securing with a big elastic band. Then I dried it with a hair-dryer.
The vertical edging was simple
- I just cut a strip of sinamay a bit more than twice the width I needed and
a little longer, folded down the rough edges about 1/2" and then folded
them again into the middle, and wrapped it round the crown. I made a feature
of covering the join at the back with a narrower band of sinamay, folded as
before and wrapped round vertically.
Then I decorated it with merry widow veiling and a feather mount from
Randall Ribbons and a hairclip I picked up
from, um, somewhere or other.
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