2014 Easter Hat

 Last year as president of our Church Ladies Auxiliary, this was the hat I entered in our decorated Easter Hat contest.  This year I am again president (a two year term), and we are again having a decorated Easter Hat contest.  Unlike other members of the Auxiliary, I take this contest seriously as a hat to wear for Easter and afterwards.  Most of the members do something funny.

This year as with last year, I started with a premade hat.  This hat I found at a thrift store about 4 years ago when I was attending the Houston Quilt Festival.  Below is the front view.

 I decided that the front view did not give me much room to decorate.  The front decoration was hot glued on and I pulled off the sequins designs and used the heat gun to loosen the remaining glue on the hat and I was able to scrape most of the glue off.  What remained was mostly invisible.  I decided to reverse the hat and use the front of the hat as the back and the back of the hat as the front.  Picture is below

 I ended up taking the trim off that covered the seams of the hat.  Recently I was in the LA Fashion District and found some great white flocked netting.  I also had found some lovely white with black polka dot netting on a roll in a ribbon store in Phoenix.  I knew I wanted to use these items.  In LA I had also picked up some flowers for 50 cents apiece.  These flowers I wanted to use on my hats and fascinators.

 I wanted to use some black to break up the large expanse of white on the crown.  I tired this horse hair tube and it didn't work like I wanted, but I did like the black so I knew I was on the right track.

 This is the finished version.  I ended up using black and white trim that I got on one of my trips to the LA Fashion District a couple of years ago. 

This is the back view.  The bow is out of horse hair braid.  The nice thing is that I sewed the flowers on the hat and the back flower is clipped on, so they can definitely be used again.  I have always loved the hats that Audrey Hepburn wore in My Fair Lady.  I have to say, that I was channeling Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady with this hat.  This is a lot of hat, but doesn't touch her hat which is good since I want to be able to wear this lovely lady.  I am so pleased with how it turned out and can't wait to wear it on Easter. I believe this might become one of my favorite hats, and believe me when I say I have many summer hats I love to wear.  I definitely feel that with this hat I could definitely attend any Royal Family outing, go to the Ascot races or go to the Kentucky Derby and be right at home.  The best thing is that the design was my very own idea.  What could be better than that.