Tip o' the Hat(s)

There have been a couple incarnations of Disney's bridal mouse ears over the years.  One set features a sparkly sequined headband with attached veil and a top hat with mouse ears and the other has the traditional beanie caps decorated for a wedding with a mini top hat and a tiara/veil combo.



Disney wedding couples seem to not like the newer set very much.  I like the bride one but the groom one is kind of cheesy.  The tiny top hat and the mock tux? Weird.  Either set provides the annoying combination of squished hair and no shade for the eyes. You can still generally find the older style bridal ears around but the top hat is nearly impossible to find, unless you want to spend $100, which is insane.  So I had a new set (that my wonderful sister gave me) and the old bride ears that I got on ebay. Still, we wanted a better option.

When we first started considering a Disney Wedding we became aware of one couple that is sort of the rock star couple of Disney Weddings.  I've mentioned Carrie Hayward before.  She literally wrote the book on Disney Weddings.  She was married in Epcot in February of 2008.  When I was looking at pictures of weddings, hers were among the first I saw and were certainly among the most memorable.  If you're a total Disney nut, like us, you'd love her trip reports on her blog.  Anyways, Carrie's husband, Patrick, got all crafty with his bad self and revamped the standard mouse ears by removing the ears and attaching them to Bride and Groom baseball caps.



While I was at David's with the munchkin, I grabbed a set of baseball caps with the intent of following Patrick's lead from Carrie's blog. Yesterday, I made my hat.

 Here are the raw materials on my crafting table.  The hats were $12 each from David's Bridal.  I'm pretty sure they'll have them at the registers at every store. I was a little wary of taking my ears apart.  What if I ruined them???  Despite my fear, I took my scissors to the headband.

Here's what I found under the velour covering of the headband.  There was tape and some fabric covering these soft metal wires that formed the shape of the ears. Despite using my happy little rounded grip jewelry-making pliers, I bent the wires pretty badly. Oh well!

When I removed the wires from the holes in the plastic headband, I was careful not to damage the fabric covering too much.  The entire headband had three rows of sequins and for some reason, I thought I might need them.  I tried really hard not to bed the wire inside the ears too much since that's what gives them their shape.  Looking at this today, I'm kind of mad at myself that I didn't cut some ears out of chipboard and shove it in the fabric to give them a little more stiffening.  Oh well.

Next I used some of my scrapbooking tools to measure the distance between the wires and punch too holes in the hat.  It worked out nicely that the vent holes in the hat were in the right places to use them for the top ear wires. I popped an eyelet in the fabric because I thought it would look nicer than just a hole.

I popped the wires through the holes and used my pliers to bend them.  My intent was to get them to fold in tight next to each other so I could sew around them.  Let me just note that sewing is not my best craft.  Still there was some fabric at the bottom of the sequins on each ear where I could sew it to the hat.  This was difficult and time consuming but those suckers are on there.  I went over and over these wires until they were almost completely covered with thread.

When I flipped back to the visible side of the hat, there was a little bit of a gap between the ear and the hat and you could see my messy stitching.  This is where saving that row of sequins came in handy.  I very carefully snipped the fabric between the rows of sequins and ended up with a strip of one width of sequins and a strip with a row of sequins, two sequins wide.  I hot glued these to the spot where the ear met the hat. It covered my sloppy sewing, made the ear stand out straighter and provided extra support to the whole deal.

Hot glue is awesome because it cools quickly and doesn't require exact precision.  I used the single row of sequins on the front and the double row on the back.  That left me with the weird wires on the inside.  I tried the hat on and they didn't irritate my head at all but I was afraid my hair would get caught on them in the park.

I had some white felt leftover from when I made my munchkins Mario and Luigi hats last Halloween.  I cut out rectangles of felt and hot glued them over the wires. It's hard to see (duh, because it's white!) but it's there and made the inside of the hat neater.




Had I thought about it before I went down to my cave of craftiness I might have brushed my hair or powdered my face down a little, but I didn't, so it's bad photo.

 And the back...