Happy Seamstress » cocktail http://www.happyseamstress.com Sewing patterns that fit you! Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:52:03 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Fascinator Tutorial http://www.happyseamstress.com/projects/easy-fascinator-tutorial/ http://www.happyseamstress.com/projects/easy-fascinator-tutorial/#comments Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:52:15 +0000 Joanna http://www.happyseamstress.com/?p=842 fascinators—they’re just so dramatic and whimsical. You’re sure to get attention even in the most crowded room when you wear one. I love them so much that I’m going to be offering fascinator kits for sale on Happy Seamstress… Read More]]> Make Your Very Own Feathery Hair Pin

I’ve always loved fascinators—they’re just so dramatic and whimsical. You’re sure to get attention even in the most crowded room when you wear one. I love them so much that I’m going to be offering fascinator kits for sale on Happy Seamstress very soon, so that you can make your very own! If you want to be notified as soon as they’re available, just sign up for our newsletter in the sidebar. You’ll also get a coupon to use towards your first purchase.

In the meantime, I’m so excited about fascinators that I can’t wait for the kits to come out to share the joy with you. So I put together this tutorial for a simple fascinator you can easily make in an afternoon with just a few materials.

What You’ll Need

  • A hair clip (either a barette or bobby pin)
  • A handful of soft feathers. Feathers with a hard stem won’t do for this project.
  • A small piece of felt in a matching colour
  • A glue gun and a glue gun stick
  • Scissors

Step 1Cut out a Felt Base


Plug in your glue gun so that it can start warming up. Cut out a small circle out of your felt, no larger than ½ inch in diameter. You’ll be attaching all of your feathers to this base. The size of your base will determine the size of your fascinator—you’re not done until all of the felt is covered!

Step 2Strip a Feather


You don’t have to strip your feathers if you don’t want to, but I love the way they look. To strip your feathers, first pick the point to start at so that you’ll have a nice shape at the end of the stem. Starting at this point, grab the feather on one side with your fingers and pull down. The fuzzy feather bits should easily come away from the stem. Do the same on the other side. If the fuzzy bits don’t come off in one piece, just keep pulling the bits off until you have a clean stem. Mix it up if you feel like it—a combination of stripped and regular could make for a really interesting fascinator.

Step 3Apply Glue


Apply a very small bead of glue to the tip of the feather. The smaller a bead of glue you apply, the tidier your fascinator will look (nobody wants a fascinator with a bunch of stringy glue gun hairs hanging off of it!). I find the easiest way to get a nice small bead is to just push the end of the stem a short way into the tip of the glue gun, without pushing the trigger.

Step 4Attach the Feather


Attach the feather to your felt base. Consider what angle you want your feather to sit at—you probably want to have feathers in the middle standing straight up, while feathers that are closer to the edge should probably be more horizontal. If you follow that as a rule of thumb, you should end up with a fascinator similar to the one in the photo at the top of the page, with a nice rounded overall shape. Of course there are no Fascinator Police, so do what pleases you!

Step 5Attach more Feathers


Repeat steps 2–4 until you cover your entire felt base. Don’t forget about the edges! The photo at the left shows what my fascinator looked like when I was about halfway done. By this point as you can see, I also attached the hair pin to the bottom of the felt base because I found it easier to handle.

Step 6Attach the Hair Pin


I attached my hair pin when I was about halfway done putting the feathers on, because I found it much easier to handle the fascinator. You should be able to attach most hair pins just by putting a blob of glue on the end of it and placing the felt base on top. Gently squeeze it down a bit, if need be.

Step 7Hide Your Shame!


In spite of your best efforts, you’ll probably have some ugly glue bits visible between the feathers. I found that a good way to hide these is by gluing the tips of some feathers in between the stems of the stripped feathers. To do so, just take a feather and cut the tip off at 1 to 2 inches from the end and glue it down wherever you need to cover something up. I liked the look of it so much that I ended up adding feather tips all over my fascinator—apart from hiding glue, I think it really helped to fill the fascinator out.

Step 8Send In a Photo

If you make a fascinator inspired by this tutorial, I’d love to see it! Send in a photo of your creation to info@happyseamstress.com and we’ll post it up in our photo gallery.

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