18th Century RN-Inspired Fascinator
18th Royal Navy Century-Inspired Fascinator
So for a little moot with my friends, I decided that I wanted to make something special for peeps. So the question was what to make? Well given the lot of us all met through online rping, I decided to make us all smut fascinators!
Just kidding, I have no idea what that is, but if anyone does, let me know. I decided since we all met through PotC/Age of Sail stuff, that why not do an 18th century sort of theme to it, and, because I had these lovely little Royal Navy buttons, why not use them for stuff? Now granted, these are all 1950-60s buttons, so they're in no way close to 18th century, and strictly speaking the fascinators are only really 18th century in so much as that was the original inspiration, but shush you need to be hyper-accurate.
Now, because I'm boring and I don't really plan things, I just sorta went out and bought stuff that I thought would work-all of which is material that can be easily gotten at a craft store, except for the particular buttons, and the black (non-felt) fabric (assuming you live in a place like where I do where finding a close fabric store is like winning the lottery).
Materials:
Ribbon 1.5” width (black satin, and/or black not-satin with wire) - about 1.5 yards per cockade;
Gold/white cord/Ribbon;
Black felt - 10”x12” rectangle (one rectangle was enough for 5 hats);
Black fabric (was a discounted fabric, a cotton I think);
Interfacing (I used Pellon 808 craft fuse);
Feathers;
Royal Navy button (can use any sort of button in the center of the cockade);
Black thread;
Hot glue + gun;
Clips/Headbands (in order to secure the hat to head);
Lace (can be used but wasn't for the pictured cockade);
The key component in each fascinator was the cockade, which meant I was doing a lot of google searching to figure out how exactly to make one. There are three sites I recommend (where the latter two are nearly identical in instructions), and the first is awesome because it is from a historical costuming site.
1. http://americanduchess.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-to-make-18th-c-cockades.html
2. http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-ribbon-cockade/?ALLSTEPS
3. http://claudinedemontigny.blogspot.com/2011/12/yet-another-cockade-tutorial-part-1.html
I definitely found that working with ribbon with a wire in it it made it a lot quicker and easier to do the folding and pinning for the cockade, and it also translates into things like the ribbon being more pose-able and almost having...more body? Weird word for ribbon, I know, but unlike my cockade the ones with wire came out less floppy. The technique in the first one is ideal if dealing with ribbon without any wire in it.
Once the cockade is done, I set that aside to focus on the base of the hat. I found a coaster which I traced onto some paper, and to get the shape in mind I wanted I added two lines to give it a pointed front, like so:
The diameter of the circle is 4 inches, and at the opposite end of the point is where I later cut a line up to the center.
At this point I cut the shape out of the interfacing and the felt, and attached it to the interfacing. Then I cut the line through both pieces to the center and used it to give the hat a rounded shape underneath (to better fit a head), and the two pieces overlapped by about ¾ of an inch, and I sewed them up. I then took the other cloth and cut a piece larger (and granted this was not the easier nor the smartest way to do this, but I was winging it) and pinned it over the hat and sewed it on to give it a nice clean edge (and from top later to bottom is the black cloth, interfacing, felt).
After that was done, I was a bit rushed for time so I didn't exactly observe the greatest technique, so I took some of the cord/ribbon, and hot glued it around the shape of the hat around and cut it when I made a whole loop, and used the hot glue to secure the ends of the cord. You can sort of make it out in this blurry photo.
I let that sit a while so it could set properly and when that was done I had bought some feathers already sewn in together and trimmed with some beading and sewed that onto the hat where it would peak out from under the cockade, and sewed that down and then sewed the cockade and button on.
After that was the part of figuring out a way to attach the hat to my head. I opted to sew the hat onto a hair clip (alas, glue didn't work), but you can also use headbands, the little clips used for hair extensions work, although once sewn in it makes them difficult to use and you would need two or more.
And that was the entire process to make the fascinator.
Full size image of the fascinator
So for a little moot with my friends, I decided that I wanted to make something special for peeps. So the question was what to make? Well given the lot of us all met through online rping, I decided to make us all smut fascinators!
Just kidding, I have no idea what that is, but if anyone does, let me know. I decided since we all met through PotC/Age of Sail stuff, that why not do an 18th century sort of theme to it, and, because I had these lovely little Royal Navy buttons, why not use them for stuff? Now granted, these are all 1950-60s buttons, so they're in no way close to 18th century, and strictly speaking the fascinators are only really 18th century in so much as that was the original inspiration, but shush you need to be hyper-accurate.
Now, because I'm boring and I don't really plan things, I just sorta went out and bought stuff that I thought would work-all of which is material that can be easily gotten at a craft store, except for the particular buttons, and the black (non-felt) fabric (assuming you live in a place like where I do where finding a close fabric store is like winning the lottery).
Materials:
Ribbon 1.5” width (black satin, and/or black not-satin with wire) - about 1.5 yards per cockade;
Gold/white cord/Ribbon;
Black felt - 10”x12” rectangle (one rectangle was enough for 5 hats);
Black fabric (was a discounted fabric, a cotton I think);
Interfacing (I used Pellon 808 craft fuse);
Feathers;
Royal Navy button (can use any sort of button in the center of the cockade);
Black thread;
Hot glue + gun;
Clips/Headbands (in order to secure the hat to head);
Lace (can be used but wasn't for the pictured cockade);
The key component in each fascinator was the cockade, which meant I was doing a lot of google searching to figure out how exactly to make one. There are three sites I recommend (where the latter two are nearly identical in instructions), and the first is awesome because it is from a historical costuming site.
1. http://americanduchess.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-to-make-18th-c-cockades.html
2. http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-ribbon-cockade/?ALLSTEPS
3. http://claudinedemontigny.blogspot.com/2011/12/yet-another-cockade-tutorial-part-1.html
I definitely found that working with ribbon with a wire in it it made it a lot quicker and easier to do the folding and pinning for the cockade, and it also translates into things like the ribbon being more pose-able and almost having...more body? Weird word for ribbon, I know, but unlike my cockade the ones with wire came out less floppy. The technique in the first one is ideal if dealing with ribbon without any wire in it.
Once the cockade is done, I set that aside to focus on the base of the hat. I found a coaster which I traced onto some paper, and to get the shape in mind I wanted I added two lines to give it a pointed front, like so:
The diameter of the circle is 4 inches, and at the opposite end of the point is where I later cut a line up to the center.
At this point I cut the shape out of the interfacing and the felt, and attached it to the interfacing. Then I cut the line through both pieces to the center and used it to give the hat a rounded shape underneath (to better fit a head), and the two pieces overlapped by about ¾ of an inch, and I sewed them up. I then took the other cloth and cut a piece larger (and granted this was not the easier nor the smartest way to do this, but I was winging it) and pinned it over the hat and sewed it on to give it a nice clean edge (and from top later to bottom is the black cloth, interfacing, felt).
After that was done, I was a bit rushed for time so I didn't exactly observe the greatest technique, so I took some of the cord/ribbon, and hot glued it around the shape of the hat around and cut it when I made a whole loop, and used the hot glue to secure the ends of the cord. You can sort of make it out in this blurry photo.
I let that sit a while so it could set properly and when that was done I had bought some feathers already sewn in together and trimmed with some beading and sewed that onto the hat where it would peak out from under the cockade, and sewed that down and then sewed the cockade and button on.
After that was the part of figuring out a way to attach the hat to my head. I opted to sew the hat onto a hair clip (alas, glue didn't work), but you can also use headbands, the little clips used for hair extensions work, although once sewn in it makes them difficult to use and you would need two or more.
And that was the entire process to make the fascinator.
Full size image of the fascinator
