Sunday I was driving through town on various errands of little importance when I noticed a proliferance of strange new signposts of a rather animate sort. It took passing up a moderate hoard of people-waving-signs-on-stitck before I hit a red light and could see what was up.

We don't get protesters, we get sales: the local Hancock Fabrics had decided to close their dors, and thus was selling every single thing in their store at a discounted rate. Music to a crafter's ears.

This is what I got away with.

Proto-suit

These fabrics are destined to be a suit- the silver, for jacket and pants/skirt; the navy for contrasting top. The color scheme is Air Force enough to make me leery (I got a bit of an Air Force overdose growing up), but hopefully I can play on/totally twist that military leaning to suit (he he) my own style.


Tigger has the best timing.

I absolutely adore pretty knit prints. Hancock had a bunch of them thrown on the back table, not on any bolt but not remnants (unless you'd count ten yards of purple paisly knit as a remnant). The price was wonderful but you had to buy the whole thing, so I asked a lady also browsing the table if she'd like to split a few nice pieces so we could get reasonable amounts (I am resourceful, and not afraid of bugging people. Fear me!). Beneath those furry paws lies one, and this was the other:


Rose Garden

This is a bit stiffer a knit, closer to the fabric of a sweatshirt than a t-shirt. I hope to turn it into a hoodie or two with contrasting navy bits, and maybe sell one in my store as my first etsy listing of the sewing persuasion.

I also purchased other odds and ends: a seam ripper, because I can never find mine (someday I will have a studio and everything will have a place and I WILL NOT CONSTANTLY LOSE TOOLS. This is my dream), buttons and ribbon. Using bits of the latter and some ribbon roses the lovely concertinapieces sent me for the "Save Tigger" movement, I threw together these hair clips:


Gothic Lolita


Cute as a ...button?

I adore those penguin buttons- and at 40% off, I couldn't resist them. I think it was a wise purchase.

* * * *

On the sales front, I've decided to post at least one item a month for someone else's benefit. It may go to a charity, it may go to one person (or animal) in need. This month it's the latter- when I heard HollysRainbow was facing the painful combination of major vet bills and no money, I couldn't help but do something. After all, so many kind people have helped and continue to help Tigger and I through a very similar situation, and I'd love to pay that forward.


HollysRainbow's Sweetie Pie

No one should ever have to choose between a friend's life and money.

To that end I bought Tigger a catnip mouse (they come highly recommended) and then listed this bracelet for the cause. I know it's not much, but limited resources is no reason not to do what I can.

Otherwise, my goal tonight is to list lots of stuff in Corvus corax, the above hair clips included. I fixed up the fascinators in my last batch that failed to satisfy (and took a picture of my Mom's to show you all), and it's time to start posting my Aunt's work. It's going to be a long night.

I made fascinators yesterday.

Look what I've been up to.


They seem, thusfar, to be the main talking point of the blog. This is totally understandable seeing as they're the only tutorial I have up (once again, thusfar- there's much more to come).

I made a neat little boquet, and shall begin the lovely process of showing off my hours of fiddling with the following:


Old Lace

This is the first one I've used actual lace on as verses tulle. It takes a bit more thought to attach because it doesn't hold its shape quite like the stiff netting, but I find that, even with the difficulty, I'm a fan of the resulting look. Lace ends up having a lot more body than tulle, and a lot more movement. The lace in this piece (which I may end up calling Aresnic and Old Lace- overkill?) is a dove grey that wonderfully compliments the muted magenta of the rose. There's a stack of white hackle feathers in there too, which were a royal pain in the ass to find.

You see, I wanted strung hackle, which is a bunch of feathers with the bottoms stitched together. This stitching makes them much, much easier to handle and glue on- without it, things get very, very messy what with the glue on your fingers getting onto the wrong part of the feathers and blah blah ugh. Unfortunately, everywhere I went, on the strung hackle rack I found only lowly, hatefully loose hackle- not a stitch in site. I mean, it's well enough if they're out- but for every package at every store in town (all from the same company, I might add) to be defective? Someone at the feather company screwed up, methinks.

To think, there's someone whose whole career dwells within the walls of a feather company. Do things like that ever strike you as odd? "Hi, my name is Doe, and I work in feathers/pencils/dice/other random objects of human manufacture."

I finally decided to return to the place with the biggest stock and dig through it and lo and behold, found two bags of actual, honest-to-gods strung hackle hiding in the dark forgotten depths of the rack. What, did the machine run out of thread?

The other pack went into this piece:


Simply Sunshine

It might be easier to see it on a contrasting surface. I really rather like this one: it's visually very simple compared to my usual fluff and glamour, and very cheerful. It's my second favorite of the batch. The following is my first:


This is more red and less pink than it appears.

The first picture in this post is truer to color, but this one still shows off the construction nicely. It's got netting, it's got flowers, it's got a feather plate and big whiskery black biots, it's got beads. Pretty, but nameless. It says feather-and-glitz showgirl to me, and the name will probably come from that. I finally titled this piece Maryella on the Trapeze, and I like the sound of such a title. Maybe the above fascinator is "Someone-or-other on the High Wire"?


Unfinished, methinks.

Something's missing on this one, but I don't know what, so I've set it aside for the time being. I like the colors and the basic layout, but it needs more to make a cohesive piece. Ideas?

I figured while I was at it with the camera, I should shoot All Hallows, from the tutorial, as well. Here she is:


All Hallows

It's almost unfair: all the pretty is in the pieces that go into the fascinators -the flowers, the feathers- and I just mash them all together. Or am I selling myself short ? If it were that easy, wouldn't I be happy with poor little "unfinished" up there? I like to think I manage to inject a little of my style, of me, into these things.

Hee. Crafter's ego.

And finally, as a preview for a future post, I've got something sitting around that matches All Hallows quite nicely, though I didn't make it.


Guest Crafter: All Hallows Bracelet

But, like I said, that's a future post. So. Has anyone else been making and/or buying fascinators lately?

For a super secret (!!!) reason I will not yet divulge to you, fascinators have been on my mind a lot lately. It was over a year ago when a kind Australian Craftster sent me a fascinator as a gift so I could figure out how to make my own. Not only did I figure out how to put them together, I swore to try and single-handedly bring them back into fashion. I seem to be making some strides towards that goal, and in the interests of pushing it even further, I'm going to give you all a nice little fascinator tutorial. One can hardly expect to bear the burden of resurrecting an entire fashion statement on one's own, after all.

I suppose the first step is to actually tell you what a fascinator is. It's a hairpiece, smaller than a hat, larger than a barette, and usually all sorts of fluffy and shiny and otherwise fascinating. Here's one of mine, by way of example:

Blue Moon

I tend to pull my hair up into a quick bun at the base of my skull and then stick the comb into the base of said bun to wear the things, and have been known to make a fascinator in the morning to match an outfit for the night's festivities (which does not imply that they are quick to make so much as it implies that I can get a bit overexcited when it comes to wearing a fascinator). But enough about wearing! How about making?

First, you'll need supplies.


Zee Supplies!

It all begins with what's referred to (for some reason I cannot fathom) as a side comb. Plastic seems to work best for fascinators because it gets along well with the glue and it's lightweight, though I do use the metal ones for beaded hair pieces. Lightweight is important because you're going to add a lot of weight- if it's too heavy, hair won't hold it. Next you'll need ribbon, then silk flowers (I like to have both a centerpiece or two and accent flowers), feathers of many different sorts (ostrich plumes, peacock eyes and swords, hackles of various colors, the big stiff curly ones whose names I can't remember), netting/lace, a needle and thread to gather the netting/lace, scissors and glue (I highly recommend E-6000). You also might want some variety of clip or clothes pin to hold things while the glue dries.

We're going to be gluing a lot here.

Step one is to wrap the plastic comb in ribbon. This makes the base both prettier and bigger- and big is good, because we're going to be trying to mount some pretty hefty things onto this little bit of plastic. Glue one end of the ribbon onto the back of the comb and then wrap it between the teeth from one end to the other, covering the end you glued on to start with.


Ribbon wrapping: it LOOKS easy, it IS easy.

When you get to the end, cut the ribbon with maybe an inch to spare, fold the spare over to hide the raw edge and glue it to the comb. This is where some sort of clothes pin really comes in handy -unless you want to hold it for a half an hour only to determine that you've glued the ribbon to your finger, not the comb. I speak from experience. It's a law of fascinator crafting: given a choice between its intended place and flesh, a given object will always secure itself to flesh.


Hair clips can stand in for clothes pins in a pinch.

While this dries, play designer. Gather the various bits for the comb and try out some layouts. You don't have to worry too much about what goes where until you're actually gluing it to the comb, but it helps to have an idea. If I don't try to figure out a gameplan before the heavy gluing begins, I tend to end up with an unbalanced, visually jarring piece of crap rather than a fascinator.


Dry run to determine a basic layout.

(Note: I do not think baby blue goes well with bright orange and black. For the purposes of this tutorial I put together two fascinators at once, so I could switch between them while waiting for glue to dry. I thought this would make things faster and more efficient. For reasons I have yet to determine, it made it take six hours. No, really, if you look at the pictures you can see how much the lighting changes as time passes.)

This is where it gets all sorts of fun and sticky. Pick up your glue, your design elements, and glue 'em on.


Then you just stick things on.

It is both that simple and that complicated. Here are some tips I've picked up over the past year:

-While logic would dictate you should glue elements on from back to front, I find it easier to glue on the back layers (feathers, netting), the main element/front layer, and then stick all the little middle bits in last. This is largely because the biggest flower is going to be the most difficult to secure to that tiny, narrow comb base, so you'll want to do it with as little stuff as possible piled between it and the comb. Also, if you get the main piece on and are disappointed, it's suprising what playing with accent flowers and feathers can do to a piece.

-Do not fear the glue. Do not get high off the glue (this is a serious hazard with E-6000), but do not fear it. Pile it on. Mound it on. It dries clear. Do not fear getting it on the teeth of the comb- you can peel it off once it's dry. I've tried wiring pieces together, tried sewing and tying them together, but nothing holds like E-6000. If you mound the glue on, your flowers and feathers will break themselves before they'll lose their hold on the comb. I tested this, to the ruin of my favorite fascinator (which I will one day glue back together, and thus resurrect stronger and faster and better).


Be careful not to get stoned off the glue fumes. Bad for you.

-If you're using heavy design elements, you'll want to keep it balanced not only for visual reasons but so it can be worn comfortably. My best friend makes fascinators a bit less overblown than my own (what can I say, I like things theatrically shiny), and she has a lot more room to play with balance and visual effect than I do.

-Gather the netting with the needle and thread before you glue it on. There's all sorts of ways to do this. Fold it in half and gather it along the cut edges for a poofy look, do the same but gather along the fold for a layered look, gather it like a bow, gather it along one edge for a very long ruff. Big gathers, little gathers. Use tulle, use lace. Tatter the edges for effect. I have no picture for this step because I couldn't find my sewing needle book and thus improvised with a bit of twisted jewelry wire. Not pretty.

-On the subject of netting, this is another good place to use your clips/clothes pins/what have you. Netting must be smushed into the glue and then held there until it dries. Notice the clip on the teal-and-white number in the above picture.

-Ribbon can be a fun design element to play with too. The feathers for one of the today's pieces are actually nothing more than a pile of feathery ribbon trim. I glued the trim together in a zig-zag to get something fluffy and tall enough to actually show up behind the centerpiece flower.


You may have to improvise a bit to get things to fit. Remember: glue is your friend.

That's all there is to it!


And presto! Fascinators.

Keep in mind that you can always come back with more glue and more glue-a-ble bits if you wake up the next morning and hate your fascinator. The first example I posted, Blue Moon, took months of tweaking before I liked it enough to admit it was my own.

I think I shall name the black and orange one "All Hallows". I may also come back and tatter the netting and feathers a bit, to give it the "Hi, I'm a ghost!" ambiance. The teal and white one is a belated birthday gift for my mother, so I leave it up to her if she wants it to have a name or not (though I tend to think that the certain caberet sparkle of my fascinators demands individual names). I suppose, until I think of something better, I'll call it "George".

Look, more fascinators!


Snow White and Rose Red


The Peahen's Envy


Creamsicle


Bringing Fascinators Back

This last one is also shamefully nameless. Any suggestions?

Also, anyone know how to get a good picture of the back of your head so I can show how very shiny these things are when worn by a human and not a table/lapdesk? I think I need an assistant photographer.