2nd Millinery Course - Week 8

So, we’re on the sinamay headpiece. I arrived and went straight for my work (wrapped up in a plastic bag to stop it fading) – it’s even more beautiful than I remember and I just LOVE the way it looks different colours in different directions. I had no idea when I decided to block more than one colour that it would look this good!

Anyway, enough of that. First we stiffened it by painting over it with a thin coating of PVA glue mixed with water (1/4 PVA and 3/4 water) and putting it back in the oven to dry. Another hat dripped on mine so when I took it out there was a big white splodge on it. I ironed it and the white splodge melted into nothing. Phew!

While we were waiting for them to dry, we made some bias binding and stretched it using the iron. A couple of us had sinamay that stretched massively, leaving us with very long very thin binding that couldn’t really be used for anything – a good lesson in testing before you do the real thing! I did manage to turn it into a very funky spring shape with the iron though, which looks fantastic. It sorts out the edges as well, which fray very easily. I might try using that technique on my hat!

The hats were now dry and we used pins to mark out the shapes we wanted to cut from them. There’s such a variety from classic kidney and tear drop shapes to punctuation marks. I love the v-shape that’s created when the sinamay is stretched when it’s blocked so I based my design on that.

With the design marked, we removed the sinamay from the block (still attached to the cling film) and cut it out. This was really scary – it’s very difficult to properly visualise the shape you’re cutting and you’re sort of trusting to faith. We bent wire into the same shape as we’d cut and stitched it to the edge – tie tacks first, then blanket stitch.

And that was as far as we got. I need to get my research and my diary printed out this week so that it can be put in my folder ready for a tutorial next week to review my progress. I’m strangely excited by that!