This is the hat that never ends...

It just goes on and on my friends,
some people, started sewing it
not knowing what it was
and they'll continue sewing it forever
just because,
this is the hat that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends...


Yes, I do apologize for getting "the song that never ends" from Lambchops play-a-long stuck in your head, but this hat really did feel like it would never en, but it did today!

This hat has taken me twice as long (or more) then it took me to make the dress it goes with, but I gotta say, it was well worth it!

When we last left off, I had made the base for the hat and the horns and trimmed away the excess buckram.  I later fit it to my model and after some tugging and pulling (the hat form was smaller then her head) I got it to fit her and drew on the shape for the skull cap.

The tape is on the point because the buckram was slightly wrinkled from the drying process and I wanted a smooth point.  I also made sure the hat curved up enough that it wouldn't cut into the models ears and give her a headache/ be painful.

With the form in the shape I like, it was now time to cover it! I used black Lycra to do it. It had just enough stretch and the buckram's texture grabbed it so it wouldn't slip. I pinned it into place and then hand basted it down to the skull cap.

This however, did leave me with a ridge of loose fabric at the top.  So I sewed it closed, cut down the excess and then basted that to the skull cap.

Now that everything is sewn down and nice and flat, its time to attach the horns!

 I hand stitched them to the Lycra first, and then went back over it, stitching through the Lycra and buckram.

 Now it was time to cover my horns! I did the same thing I did for the base, I draped the black Lycra over the form of the horn and pulled it till it was tight.  I then sewed that shut and pulled/pinned the excess to the skull cap.

After it was pinned down, I hand stitched 3 rows of stitching to the hat base to secure and flatten the horn fabric down to the hat and started on horn number two.

 Once that was all attached, I had to drape a cowl hood to go over the hood.  I started with muslin and with a little help from my instructor Joanne, we draped the shape of the hood while I wore it, and then marked the lines we wanted to transfer to an actual pattern with a black sharpie.

The result looked something like this:

Which I then pinned to paper and went over with a spiky tracing wheel and got a paper pattern, which looked like this:

Which I then placed on some blue Lycra I found and made a mock up of my hood (really it does make a hood, I swear).

See?

I fit this on another students head and took it in where it was too loose. Once I was done it was nice and fitted. The next step was possibly the longest.  Our Dear 13th fairy has purple stripes all over her hat (is it really a hat? She is a dragon after all) so I needed to stripe my fabric, which involved me  tracing out my pattern on black Lycra and drawing in where I wanted the purple lines to go, then cutting along those lines and sewing in 2.5cm strips of purple Lycra (folded in half) between the two pieces.  Not a fast process to be sure and it had to be repeated for all six pieces of the hood (two front pieces, two back and two horns).

Once that was done, and everything was hemmed and sew down (you didn't think I'd show the finished process yet did you? :D) I had to make the spines that come out of the back of the hat.  So I covered some heavy interfacing (felt) with black Lycra and sewed them on.

In the end it looked like this:

 Rar.

Oh yes, the 13th fairy is now 100% done. :)