How to Make a 1950s-60s Veiled Cocktail Hat

Here's another vintage hat tutorial today, using some scraps from your stash and a hat base from your recycling bin. This little cocktail hat is an open fabric band embellished with millinery veil and little autumn berries.


You will need:

scrap of fabric- wool, velvet, whatever you like
a cereal box
millinery veil- available from JoAnne Fabrics or on etsy
flowers or berries of your choice. I found these from the dollar tree

PATTERN: download the pattern for free from Dropbox right here


trace your pattern onto the cereal box and cut two pieces

glue the two pieces together for more stability

cut your fabric band on the bias, so it bends around the age a little easier
glue the hat base together, forming a circle and whip stitch the fabric to the hat base.

cut your veil 1 yard long. Gather the veil by folding the long edge like an accordion, with small folds. sew back and forth through the accordion folds to secure.

Use a few anchor stitches to attach the veil to the hat band.

decorate the veil with berries, flowers or fabric bows. I used hot glue and tried to anchor most of the berries to the base and the center of the veil. If you like, you can cover the center of the veil, were most of the berry or flower stems are with a little bow. I found this vintage velvet ribbon in my stash.

You can also sew little hair combs to the inside band of this hat, if it doesn't want to stay on by itself.

Free Pattern: Two 1940s Knitted Cardigan Patterns

 

Here are some more knitting patterns from my poor crumbly 1942 knitting pattern booklet. I want to save these patterns and post them online to share before they crumble into pieces forever!
See my free patterns page for more free vintage knitting, crochet and sewing patterns

last 3 rows read:
"and let 7th st drop...."
"ending K 3. Row 4-..."
"Row 7- K 1, * skip..."

How to Make a 1940s Halo Hat

 Today we're continuing our weekly vintage hat tutorials in honor of National Make a Hat day, which was September 15th. Today I'll show you how to make a 1940s style halo hat with a few inexpensive craft supplies and very little need of millinery know-how. This is a great little hat that can be worn with lots of different hair styles. Wear your hair down and curly or in a snood, with victory rolls or bangs or a poodle! Lets get started....

You will need:
a thin headband, plastic or metal, mine is from the Dollar Tree
 Stiff wire. You can use wire from the hardware store or a coat hanger works fine
craft felt (or wool felt if you're feeling fancy)
trimmings of any kind- feathers, sequin trim, beaded trim, flowers, etc.
sewing needle and matching thread or sewing machine

PATTERN:  Download the pattern for free from Dropbox right here!

Cut out two pieces of felt. With both pieces together, stitch along the curved side, 3/8 inches from the edge.

Turn, press seam (as best as you can with craft felt, don't melt it to your iron!) and stitch again along the curved side, 3/4 inches from the edge to form a channel

 Insert wire into the channel and trim the wire so there's about 1/2 inch of open space on each side of the channel.

Carefully stitch along the flat edge, 3/8 inch from edge, being mindful of the wire.

Stitch along the flat edge again, 3/4 inches from the edge to form another channel

Snip a little hole and insert your headband into this channel. You may need to trim the headband down to size. I used scissors on this plastic dollar store headband.

*note- you can reduce the bulk of your headband by removing any decorative fabric around the plastic or metal base*

Stitch the hole closed.

Bend the wire a little to shape your hat

Now time to decorate!! The sky is the limit here. Add flowers, beaded or sequin trim, leave it plain, whatever you like. This hat is based on one of my favorite 1940s hats from my personal collection so I'll show you how to make these felt pom poms just like my original!

Use black and blue felt (or whatever colors you like) and cut 5 circles of each color, 2 inches across and 5 strips of thin felt about 7 inches long.

Snip a hole in the middle of each circle and snip fringe along the outer edge of each circle. Tie a knot in the end of one of the felt strips and string a blue and black circle through each strip.

Hang the pieces at different lengths from the side of the hat. Cover the ends with a little felt bow. I used hot glue to stick these pieces on but sewing would be nicer.


I hope that you enjoyed this hat tutorial.We'll have one more next Tuesday!

If you had time, what would you do with it?

Today I woke up, washed the dishes, got the kids on the bus and did my usual sitting with some tea, scrolling through Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest while I get out of my morning groggy state.

While reading through the comments of a Facebook post, I saw a guy arguing his opinion back and forth with random internet strangers. It was a really long thread. How long? 8 hours! This guy sat on his phone and argued with internet strangers for 8 hours of his life.

I often wonder, when I'm an old lady (I hope I get to be an old lady!) and my time is running out, how much will I regret the hours spent staring at my phone? How much will it matter that someone I didn't know said something I didn't like? When I'm laughing at silly memes, how many funny moments of real life will I miss? If I took the hours from a week that I spent on social media and did something else with it, what could I do?

In this guy's case, he had 8 hours. He could drive somewhere he's never been and explore it. He could make something beautiful, connect with another human, see every priceless work of art at a museum. He could cook the most amazing meal he's ever had, take a class and learn to do something he's always wished he could do. He could have had an incredible, fulfilling day that he'd remember as an old man when his time is running out. He'll never get that time back and for every minute that I spend scrolling and liking and commenting, I'll never get it back either.

Social media is really great in a lot of ways.  I get to see what my friends are up to, see people's pretty vacation pictures or funny kids pictures, find fabulous recipes and inspiration for crafty things. I share things I've made or done and connect with people that I otherwise would have never met.  It's great! But I find that I spend more time "finding inspiration" than I do actually doing those things. It's addicting for sure. People make jokes about "come hang out with me and we can all stare at our phones" but its really not funny. Its sad.

A few weeks ago, I downloaded a new app. What I can honestly say is the only truly "life changing" app I have ever had. It's called Forest and its designed to keep you off your phone. You set a timer for 10 minutes to 2 hours and in that time, a little tree grows. If you mess with your phone before the timer goes off, the tree dies. For growing full trees, you get points that you can use to buy cute, pretty trees. It's like a game and in order to get your points, you just live your life! Since I started using it, I've been more productive in my housework, I have more time for my crafting, I go for walks, read books. I feel happier and less stressed out because my work is done and I didn't spend my day annoyed on Facebook. The best part is, it shows you how much time you stayed off your phone and at the end of the day, I see all of the hours that I spent living and enjoying life.

I have to go now, I have trees to grow and an awesome day ahead of me. I hope you do too!

How to Make a 1940s Straw Tilt Hat

Since September 15th is national make a hat day, I thought it would be fun to show you how to make a couple of vintage style hats for yourself throughout the month. No specialized millinery tools will be needed, we'll keep it simple. Come back every Tuesday for a new hat tutorial now till October 4th!

This week's hat tutorial takes a nod from many 18th century costumers with our hat base being made from a place mat. You can find these place mats at the dollar store, Walmart, Target and home decor stores. They come in all different colors. Mine is unfortunately not real straw, but a strange woven plastic material but that's alright!



The 15 inch place mat is too big so I snipped the edge of the place mat and unraveled it till it measured about 10 inches across.

If you have a styrofoam head, tack the place mat down with two pins. If not, you can just hold it up to your own head to see where you want the bend in the hat to be. place the pins where the hat tie will attach.  If you attach the ribbon closer to the outside edge, it will make the hat bow more, as shown below.  You can get the tutorial for these pretty vintage style heads from Poupees on etsy. They're very easy to make and fun!
 

  Pinch the under side of the hat at the bend and sew in two little tacks to keep the bend where you like it.

I found these decent faux flowers at the dollar store. Pull your flowers apart and arrange however you like in the center of the hat.

I used hot glue to stick these guys in place. I found some vintage millinery feathers in my stash so I used one of those and a few pieces of faux grass to cover the funny little edge where we unraveled the straw.

On the back of the bend in the hat, make a large bow or you can add more flowers here. Sew or glue a wide fabric ribbon tie to the under side of the hat, near the center.

Make sure to trim any of these clear threads from the edge.

Arrange your hair however you like and tie the hat on. I've seen this style hat worn with hair down in a pageboy style or with an updo.

I hope you enjoyed this hat craft. Stay tuned next Tuesday for another vintage hat tutorial!

5 Free Vintage Halloween Printable Decorations

This week, we're decorating for Halloween. If you'd believe it, I don't have much in the way of vintage Halloween decorations! I took to the web to find some printables that the kids and I can make at home. Here are 5 of my favorite spooky vintage freebies for you to print, cut and enjoy. We mixed printables from the two garlands to pick our favorite graphics and we decorated the house with some of the pumpkins and kitty heads!  These blogs and websites have a lot of other really wonderful craft tutorials and freebies so take a few minutes to poke around and see what you find!

Vintage Halloween Pumpkin Banner from Craftaholics Anonymous

Vintage Style Book Covers with Halloween and Magic Themes from Paging Supermom

Printable Vintage Halloween Favor Dish from Altered Artifacts

Vintage Halloween Printable Garland from Made in a Day

Vintage Printable Owl Halloween Invitations from Martha Stewart