Genre Mash-Up: Steampunk Sailor Mars - Pt 6

The Sailor Senshi all wear a tiara with a coloured jewel in the middle of their forehead. I really didn't want to wear the gold band across my forehead, so I opted to make a hat instead. My goal was to make a cap, shaped to my head, with the front edge mimicking the shape of the tiara. It turned out quite well! Probably the best hat I have made yet!

I tried cutting a flat piece, but that resulted in a very flat cap that stuck out on either side of my head....kinda looked like wings! Not what I was going for. After a few failed attempts at "winging it" to get the shape I was looking for, I pulled out a foam head, pins and thread to join my paper and pencil. 

I measured on my own head the total length that I wanted. I then measured this and marked it with pins on the front and back centres of the foam head. I put another pin in the top middle, and tied a piece of thread joining the three points. I measured how far I wanted the hat to come down above my ear, and placed a pin in that point as well. I marked out the general shape I wanted using pins on the foam head, and joined them up with thread. I then started dividing this up. I wanted to create a series of flat shapes that would form a curve when stitched together. I placed pins within the general shape, and joined them together with thread also.

Once I had the little pieces marked out, I carefully traced them onto the piece of paper, following the thread lines. These were now my pattern pieces.

I traced these onto a nice patterned felt, flipping them over to get both a left and right side for the hat. I then cut them out, and started carefully stitching them together. Once all the pieces were sewn, I put a line of glue down each seam, on the inside of the hat, to help reinforce the seams. The stitches are mostly holding onto the fuzzy soft side of the felt, to avoid too many stitches showing on the outside, and this doesn't hold very well. The risk of a stitch popping out was a little too high for my liking. The glue helped.

With all the pieces sewn and glued in place, I stitched a lighter piece of lace around the outer edge. This was going to be my faux tiara.

I hung a chain and a Mars symbol from the bottom of the jewel, and stitched that into place. Last minute, I decided to add a gear behind it, to help add a little more Steampunk flavour to it. Yes, I added a completely erroneous gear to make it more Steampunk... But, it does look cool.

I found a set of gold bobby pins with little amber jewels in it, and used that to pin the hat to my hair. I think that, even though they are far more visible, they look a thousand times better than plain black bobby pins! 

With the rest of the outfit, it was a nice final touch!