Lolita/Renaissance Hat... Revisted

You will need: 2 felt hats.  OK to Wash Fabric Glue by Aleene's.  Scissors.  Hot Glue Gun.  Hairclip/comb/ribbon.  Trim of your choice.

Step one.
Take one of your felt hats and scissor.  Start off by cutting the brim of your hat.  Yes, your going to cut your hat into pieces.  After you cut the brim off, make a slit up the side, to the top of the hat.  


Good, now cut the rest of the body of the hat off from the very top of the hat, keeping the top of the hat's circular/oval shape.  So now you have a bunch of hat pieces, right?  This is going to be the pattern you will use for the fabric.  The best part about this is that after you have cut this one hat up, you don't have to cut another one up, just keep the pieces and you can make more in the future!



 
Step two.
After you have chosen your fabric, take the pieces of your cut up hat and proceed to cut your fabric.  Now, depending on your fabric choice you might have to tweak how your cutting.      

Now for the brim, I cut two pieces.  One for the top and one for the bottom.  You don't have to do both, its just what I like to do.With fabrics that have more give then others I make the hole on the topside of the top brim smaller, where the bottom piece the opening will be normal size.  The brim on the bottom will be wider than the top piece.  (Hopefully I haven't lost you yet!)

 Step three.
Its now time to bring out your fabric glue.  I start with the brim first.  You don't have to, but I think it looks better this way for me.  Take your uncut hat and smear the fabric glue around on the brim.  I also like to let the glue sit on the hat so that it can get nice and tacky for when I put the fabric on.  Slip the top cover of the brim over the hat and smooth it over the brim, and fold over the extra fabric to the other side of the brim and glue it down.  Some of the glue might seep through the fabric, don't worry because the glue
dries clear.  After you have secured your fabric 
This process can be a bit long and tedious, but it is well worth the wait and effort.  After your feel that the glue has dried enough I like to then put the very top piece onto the hat, again smearing the glue on top and them smooth over the fabric.





  The middle, or body of the hat should be the only thing left to be covered (except for the bottom of the brim of course).  Take your fabric and glue, and put glue on the top and bottom edge of the fabric.  Now fold it over so that it looks like you have a clean hem.  After the glue has dried enough on the fabric it is time to go ahead and glue on the 

 middle of the hat.  













Your going to wrap the fabric around the hat, making sure that the folded sides are facing into the hat.  One side will over lap the other, this is normal.  This is where I like to do another fold and glue it down, making it appear that there is a seam going up the side of the hat.  







Now, if you want to, you can take the bottom brim fabric and just like we did with the edges of the middle piece, we will do the same to the bottom of the brim piece (I have a feeling pictures are going to make this much easier to understand, and a video which I will try to do soon).  Again, this gives the hat a clean look once you glue the bottom piece.  

You now have a fully fabric covered hat!

 Step four.
This is where it gets easier, or at least it should be easier.  Before you plug in your glue gun, play around with your trim a bit, find what looks better with what.  After you have an idea of what you want your hat to look like your ready to start gluing!

Before anything, I like to glue down my ribbon/band around my hat.  

After that I will add a bow, flowers, or a pendent to go on the front or side of my hat.  After I have finished with my gluing, sometimes I will add a string of beading onto the hat if I feel that it needs it.

Step five.

I always add my hair clip or ribbon at the end, again you don't have to go by this example completely, its just how I like to do it.  If you're using a hair clip, I like to make sure that the clip is about the same width as the opening of the hat because the hat will have better support on your head.  I place the clip right in the middle and use the hot glue gun to glue each end of the clip to my hat.  With ribbons you can either sew them in, or glue them.  Its going to be faster and easier to glue, but with sewing you might feel more at ease about how tight you tie your hat on to your head.

And now you have your very own Lolita hat!

PS.

I tried to edit this... and I made things worse... my computer is not helping so I am just going to stop here and come back to this when I have a properly working computer...

 over the brim, again let the hat sit for a while.