No Cat In This Hat

Hello my lovelies!  Steampunk Worlds Faire is right around the corner, and it's stalking my thoughts.  Since my sewing machine had been in the repair shop I decided to start work on my props for the Demeter costume.
Every year I want to have a hat, and every year I fail at making one.  Not this year!!  I've made a hat and in this post I'm gonna give you a run through of how I made it.  First, I started with a pre-made felt hat. 

Remember this?

That's Marina on the left, I'm on the right at NYCC 2010. That Hat. I hate it so much. It was an internet buy with the intent on making it look so much better. As you can see that failed spectacularly. It's basically a felt hat that you can pick up at any Party City store.  So I took off all the jazzies I put onto it, leaving just the brown felt and nothing else.  Then this happened:

There's a hole in the hat
dear Liza, dear Liza!

So once I had the hat stripped down, I wanted to make it lower than the original height cause, lets face it, that hat looked ridiculous on me.  Once I had the two pieces I trimmed them and then sank the solid top part into the hollow bottom and glued it into place (sorry no photo of that step).  This is where the first Facebook post about burning myself happened.  No there is no photo for that.
  

It's not easy being green.

After I had a pretty solid base, and the burning pain in my finger wore off, I moved onto the leaves.  I picked up 2 generic AC Moore/ Michaels ivy leaf garlands and began plucking the leaves off and sorting them by size.  Yes I sorted them by size but it worked for my process... so, in your face.  This is where the 2 other burns and subsequent Facebook posts took place.  This is also the longest step, gluing each individual leaf to the hat and covering it completely.  This took me days to finish and I was getting nervous that it would not get finished.  After the leaves were completely glued, I took one of the clock hair pieces I made and refurbished it.

Bye Bye Birdie.

I pulled the feathers off but kept the clock face the same... mainly because I was afraid that if I started yanking on the clock face it my damage the art on the face or bend it out of shape.  I put down new feathers, leaves, vines and I found wheat stalks.  Cause, ya' know, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest and seasons.  I added pin backs and stuck it to the hat.

Look at my Hat!
My hat is a amazing!
Give it a Lick!

It tastes just like raisins!

It's super fun and it has a big feather!!  Barbossa would be proud of this feather and would want one for his hat too.
The next step is to take my sewing machine back to the repair shop.  I pulled it out of it's casing after getting it back from the repair shop tonight and sewed 2 inches and it jams.  I did nothing to it, I swear!!.  I was using scrap fabric to test it and a good thing too.  After 2 inches of stitch work, the machine seized up and jammed.  I kept the settings the same as when I took it out of the case.  I'm incredibly pissed off right now, cause I've got to now schlep the thing back to this guy and complain about how it doesn't work.  I'm running out of time to sew the skirt!!  Well, I guess I'll continue working on my props since there's not much else I can do without a sewing machine available.
Well I've got work in the morning so I'm gonna go sleep and pray I get my sewing machine in working order before May.
See Ya'll Later!