How To Make A Hair Ornament

Hi I am Janie Lawson and I am a Milliner. I run the Glam Hatters Tea Parties. Today I am going to be showing you how to make hair accessories. In this tutorial I am going to show you how to make a wedding fascinator. We are going to be using a sinamay base. We have some veiling and we have got our feather trims here. Now you can buy all these individually, or you can buy them in kit form. I do the glam hatters kits and you can check out my website if you want to have a look at making one of these. So first of all, we've got your pattern. Now, I've made a circle but you can really make any shape. You could make a teardrop shape or star, whatever you like. Now, you have got your sinamay triangle, which I've folded. I take my pattern piece up to the top of the triangle, so I'm keeping away from the folded edge. I pop in a pin in here, inside and a pin here and then I'm going to cut around the pattern. Now I'm going to take off the paper pattern, so I'm left with my two layers, pop my pins back in, and then I'm going to use my wire for the edges. This is called memory wire and its a really fib product because it holds the shape that you put into it. Now I'm going to start sewing. Because the sinamay has got quite big holes, rather than making a huge knot at the bottom of my double thread, what I did is I call a lasso stitch. So, my first stitch, I pull it through and I leave part of my stitch on the other side and I stitch from the front to the back and I just go in-between the thread so I'm making a little lasso because if you try to make a knot big enough to not go through the sinamay, you will be here all week. Now I'm going to hold the wire on, and this is very simple. I'm in half a centimetre from the edge and coming up one side of the wire, going around the wire and back down to the back. I'm going to go all the way around sewing the wire in. The stitches don't have to be tiny, you can do them about a centimetre apart, just to hold the wire in. Now you might find on this first stage that it can be a bit fiddly, because you've got the raw edge of the sin may and the thread can get a bit caught but just take your time and be patient because its really worth it. The wire is one of the most important pieces of the hat, because it gives it the shape. So I've stitched all the way around. Now when I've gone to the end of the wire you can see I've overlapped it. So that is about three inches overlap and smaller stitches on the overlap to keep it all in place. Okay, so the next part is putting on the bias strip. So we get the strip back, that I cut earlier, and we are going to open it out and I fold each side towards the middle and when I'm pressing it, rather than pulling on it I'm pressing down onto it to make a nice sharp fold. If you start pulling on it, it will pull out of shape a little bit because its on the bias so its quite stretchy. So I've gone down one side and you can see I've not quite gone into the middle. I'm going to do the same on the other side, because what you don't want is you don't want them both touching because once you fold it back, you will get little bits of sin may popping through the edge and you don't want that because you are going to be wearing it on your head and you don't want it to be uncomfortable. So, you can see I've left a little gap in the middle. Now I'm going to fold that back down all the way along pushing down on it. I'm going to cut off the end and then the lovely thing about this is you can just give it a stretch and I'm doing this kind of action to curve it so that it will go around the circle easily so you are just pulling all the way around and you have got this nice curvy bias strip. Now I'm taking my base and this is where you need your pins and I'm sandwiching the base between the bias strip so its on each side. Then I'm going to pop my pins in and as you are doing it you are going to think its never going to go in, its never going to fold but it just will because sin may is what they call the milliners friend and it will do what you want. So I'm pushing it in, gently pushing it as I go. A good tip with the pins, have them pointing forwards rather than pointing into the middle. That way you will not hurt yourself so much. When you get to the edge, either you can use this bit to make a swirl, or you can trim it off. For this one I am going to trim it off so you trim, fold it underneath so you have not got any rough edges, pin it over your starting point so that is all nice and tucked in. Now I'm going to sew this in place. So you get your double thread again with the knot at the bottom. The idea of this stage is its almost like a staple. You are stapling down the front and the back all at the same time and you want to be quite close to this edge because you don't want that to peel up later. So I start at the back and the underneath bit is the bit you have wired because you don't want that showing through the top. Little stitch on top and then you can do a bigger stitch underneath because that is going to be against your head and nobody is going to see that anyway. So there we go, I'm stitching along and a good thing to do is take your pins out as you go. There will be less to catch up on or cut your thread up on and you'll know when you've sewn. For the next part, I'm going to take the veiling. This is seventy centimetres long. I am going to scrunch one side, grab a pin and I'm going to pin this towards the back through the scrunch. So I am going to pin here and do the same on the other side and scrunch up. Its nicer with the veiling because its just like scrunching up a piece of paper. Very easy. What I tend to do is cross the pins over to keep it all in place. Now, this is the bit where you learn how to make a birdcage veil. Everybody really likes a birdcage veil at the moment. Go down to the middle, pull it back on itself and just using your pins, pin through a square of the veiling. Then, go halfway between the scrunch at the back and the pin at the front and do the same thing. So you are pulling it forwards, pulling it back and pinning through a square of the veiling. Again on the other side, going to the middle, pulling it back and through a square of the veiling. Now you can do that as much as you like so you can end up with this quite flat, or you can do what I did and leave it so it has got a nice bit of height. You can see that gives you a nice shape there. Now the thing to do next is to work out where you want your feather. These feathers are lovely. They are even nicer if you give them a bit of a curve. So you think that might be quite nice at the side, and then you have got these little ones that you can tuck in behind to come out. So what I'm going to do is first of all, sew on my veiling, so I have not got millions of things on the base to work around. Again, always a double thread with millinery with a knot at the end. Now where the scrunch is I'm just going to pop in a few stitches to hold that all in place. Now if you wanted to, you could add beading at the same time so you end up with a bit of sparkle going through. A good thing to do is take your pins out as you go along. That way you know that everything is in place and you know that you have already stitched it so you don't end up going back at the end and doing more stitches. Okay, so that is the scrunch on. Now I am going to do a big stitch underneath and wherever I've pinned I've pinned through the little squares, so I know all I have to do is cut that square, take the pin out, pull it through. That's one, I am going to flip over here and sew a big stitch underneath in order to get over to that pin. Stitch through that bit of veiling, that is another bit on. Brilliant. So that is my veil on. I am going to pop on the feathers, and all I need to do is just to get this on and sew around the stem. You can see there is a little stem on the end of the feathers here. Now I'm going up one side of the stem, down the other side. Sometimes like I did then, you will get caught around the feathers. Just be careful of that because we really need to be around the stem. To tie off, I'm going to the back, and I'm doing a version of the lasso stitch I did at the beginning. So I pull it through but I keep holding onto the stitch, go back up and go through that loop. Pull it nice and tight and I always do two of those just to kake sure its nice and secure. So we have got the fascinator and the decoration. We need to keep it on our heads. So now we have made the base of the fascinator and the veiling and the decoration, we need to make it sit on our heads. The way we do that is we use a comb. Now you put the comb at the back of the fascinator, facing forwards. So I have had a little think about where the front would be. this is going to be the front because this is where the veiling is. So I have popped the comb at the back. I get my double thread again, make sure I've got a knot in it. I start at the back and make sure it is just a little stitch at the front but I angle the needle so that I come out between the teeth. I'm going to be stitching along the comb through the teeth. This is the bit that really needs to be secure because this is the bit that keeps it on. So I've done this fascinator with a circle and have arranged the feathers at the back. You can really, once you have got the sin may and the veiling, you could do any shape you like as I said earlier. you could really have fun with it and really be creative and a little bit crazy because most milliners are. you could add crystals or buttons, anything really. With the veiling, this is a plain veiling, but you could make a spot veiling by getting some pipe cleaners and tying them just around the squares and trimming them off. So you could do multi colored veiling as well. So you can really have fun with it. Now I'm at the last tooth. To finish off, I'm going to do that lovely millinery stitch again. Come up, hang on to my stitch, come back down, go through the loop. I do one more of those to make sure its all secure. It might seem like the comb is the wrong way around. The reason for that is, to put it into your hair, hang on to the comb, lift your hair up, and you are going to brush the comb backwards and then push it forwards so its all nice and secure. That is how you make a wedding fascinator.