Flamboyant fascinstor..

My Philip Treacy fascinator is all finished and I'm slightly in love with it! There's things which I could have done to improve the quality overall and I'm sure I will like my next fascinator even more but for now this is my best creation! I love the colours, I wanted it to all link together which I think it does. The picture of my first hat which I made on the postcard links in with the colour of the sinamay and the feathers. It's not really a wearable piece as the postcard can move back and forward so that you can see both sides of it, it's more of an example of my skills. 

                                                 

Until my next creation, 

Sophie.. 

Postcard

For the center piece of my fascinator I made a postcard, not just a normal postcard but one printed onto fabric.

Firstly I made a design on Word and printed it onto transfer paper, I had to reverse the text and pictures because once it's been transferred onto the fabric it will be the opposite way round. I used a picture of Philip Treacy and photo shopped a crown onto the picture so it would look like a stamp instead of the queens normal stamp. 

Then I used a heat press at 200 degrees to transfer the image onto plain fabric. 

Now it was time to get sewing! I sewed round the stamp in different stitches to get the effect on zig zags which you find on a normal stamp, if I was doing this again I would also sew a watermark onto the stamp but at the time I hadn't thought about that!

Then embroidered into some of the letters so the capitals stood out from the other text.  Finally I sewed the two sides together with blanket stitch to create a postcard! 

Sophie..

Next Creation..

Now that I've learnt the basics my next creation is a fascinator for Philip Treacy. He completely inspires my work so this fascinator is for him! 

For the base of this fascinator I trapped feathers inside the two layers of sinamay, just to give it a little twist which I think looks really good.

I cut out the shape I wanted then made bias binding and hand sewed that around the edge. 

After I'd made the sinamay swirls and a postcard (which I'll so a separate post about) I started playing around with the position of them. I had three different colors of sinamay so I had to balance the different colors together and see which ones worked well. I also added some feathers as that linked back to my first hat which was on the postcard. 

I prefer layering the sinamay on top of each other instead of having them side by side, I think it makes it more interesting to look at and gives a more exciting look. I also tired twisting the different color sinamays together which I really like! 

Once I was happy with the composition I sewed them all done, then sewed a comb to the bottom of the fascinator so it could be worn. I'm really happy with it overall, there are things I need to keep working on. Like the bottom of the fascinator isn't very neat, the comb I bought was quite thick so next time I would use a thinner one which would make it look a lot neater. But for my second facsinator I'm really happy with it and can't wait to create more! 

Sophie.. 

Lesson Three..

Lesson three was all about attaching. This is where the fascinator came together and actually became a fascinator! Firstly I attached bias binding around the edge of my base.. 

Then I played around with the swirls in different positions to see which worked best.. 

After I had a composition I was happy with I sewed them together using small stitches and layering them on top of each other. I also used some of the left over bias binding to create a swirl for the middle of the flower. 

And that's my first fascinator created! I can do a lot better than this but it's a good practice and it's amazing to think it was all created from scratch by hand. 

Sophie.. 

Lesson Two..

I used to be scared of hand sewing because I thought it was all so small and fiddly and there was no way I could do it.. I was wrong! Once you know how to do it properly it's actually pretty fun!

I started off by making some bias binding out of sinamay. This goes round the base of the fasinator which I cut out in my first lesson and makes the edge a lot cleaner. For this I cut a strip of sinamay on the bias and folded the sides into the middle.

Then folded the sides into each other so you have like a little envelope for your base to fit into.

Once you put the sinamay into the little envelope you hand sew it so it's secure. The stiching is quite hard to explain. Secure the thread first and then you go through the top couple of layers, then back and straight through to the other side, then repeat on that side  till your finished! So that's not the best explanation but it's easier to actually do it then say it! 

The next technique was making a seam out on the sinamay without sewing, just using the sinamay! Again it's quite hard to write a description, I cut oval shapes out of sinamay for my base. Then starting at the left side you take the sinamay in between your thumb and forefinger and roll it up and down pulling as you do. It's a really hard technique to get the hang off, the tighter you pull as your rolling the better the seam. Went round all the edge like this and then once the edges are done you can twist them into different shapes and swirls.  

 Practice definitely makes perfect with this technique! 

Sophie..