Padding the Hat Out

Before I start sewing the fabric onto the hat I wanted to smooth out and fill in the dent and bulky parts of the hat, I also wanted to try and get the shape a little more symmetrical and more hat-like. I was just going to wrap wadding around it but I thought that it wouldn't solve the asymmetry and also I'd have a hard time sticking wadding down so instead I used bubble wrap and gaffer tape to pad some areas out which worked pretty well and I felt tons better about the shape of the hat - since I thought I butchered it after trying to make the body of the hat fatter.

I also sorted out the extremely wonky top of the hat - I cut away the newspaper and clipped the wire down before duck-taping the raw edges so the spiky wire wouldn't stick out - it didn't completely cure the odd shape but it made it less noticeable.

After getting that done I was still concerned about the little sticky out pieces of wire catching and ripped the fabric that so I decided to cover it wadding - I was hoping that it wouldn't make the hat to heavy but wadding and bubble wrap isn't that heavy, I also think that since I've decided to cover it in wadding all that effort into paper-maching it has gone a bit to waste but I don't really care because without covering it in newspaper I wouldn't have been able to see where the dents and wonky places were and they would have been harder to fix with just the wire frame and nothing else.

I had thought of fastening the wadding with a staple gun but that didn't prove too effective in actually staying on, I also thought of stitching it on but it would get bunched up somewhere and then all my effort with bubble wrap to make not look lumpy and bumpy will have just on to waste. So I decide to use a glue gun because at least that way I will be able to get the wadding on fairly smoothly and without lumpy-ness.

I was a lot happier with the shape of the hat today and with that sorted I can start putting the checker-board fabric on the hat and then start decorating it with the cards, bows and roses.

I know a lot of work that I did today won't be seen......BUT I know it was there and I know that filling in the gaps and smoothing out the appearance of the hat will make it look better and also makes me happier and more confident in the hat.