sinamay – Sour Kiss Designs

Today in class we worked on sculpting a hat with our sinamay. I used the sinamay I dyed. Before dying, It was one big square that I cut along the bias to make two triangle pieces. So the idea was to pin it to your head block and start playing around with it.

First things first. You can either roll the edges for a clean look or unravel them for a more wilder look. I decided to roll them. It took a good while and made my thumbs hurt, but it was worth it.

rolled edge sinamay — rolling the edges of the sinamay so it doesn’t fray

Then I put my two pieces together and folded them in half to create a band to go around the head. I then pinned it around my head block. I had both ends sticking out and decided to twist them around and created something that reminds me of a flower. Now I have these big pieces to play around with and figure out what I think looks best.

I kept changing the sides and re-pinning the pieces since I didn’t like the way it came out the first time. The first time I had the pieces curve on both sides, didn’t like it, so I took all the pins out and decided to move it all to one side.

sinamay hat pinned — what I ended up with

The last step is tacking where all the pins are with thread so all the pieces stay in place.

sinamay hat fini — all pieces are tacked – ready to wear!

I had a small piece left over and sculpted a little head piece. I’m either going to put it on a headband or put a comb on it.

sinamay headband start — left over pieces

All last week I made some mini hat and pillbox frames by blocking buckram. I plan to make one of the brimmed hats into a tricorn hat, if not both. I just need some trim for the outside of the brim.

I covered one of the pillbox hats and it’s nearly complete. I just need to permanently attach the flower pendant.

giraffe pillbox wip — pillbox covered with textured giraffe print felt

Remember the cocktail hat frame from last time? It’s finally covered. I didn’t get to work on more flowers in class, but I plan on making smaller ones to put on this. I also wired the crown for the fedora but I feel I made it too short.. but I still need to make the brim.

Next week we will finally be sculpting a hat with sinamay. The teacher gave us a natural colored piece and I decided to dye mine. I want to use two different colors together – makes it more interesting.

I used RIT powdered dye. To get the nice rich darker colors I used dying directions I found online and combined them with the RIT dye directions. Directions can be found here.

I’m also going to post a little tutorial on wiring your buckram :] » Tutorial can be found here

Tag: sinamay

sculpting a hat with sinamay

hats hats hats