Learning: Crinoline Veils

Last year's learning streak continues this year, and I am still loving my online millinery courses through Hat Academy, to keep my skills moving forward even when I don't have much free time for my craft. Although actually I started this course last year, but I've just bought a couple more and I have a gift voucher from Christmas, so it's definitely ongoing!

This is my first piece using the skills from the Veiled Crowns Deluxe Course, taught by Rebecca Share. The trim is taught in the Leather Flower Crowns course, which I took even though I don't use leather, because I love the style of the halo crowns, which you saw combined with lace millinery in my lace garden collection. And the techniques are proving useful in other ways and with other materials, so I'm really glad of it.

I had hardly even handled crinoline before taking this course, and I loved learning so much about the material. Even though I hadn't yet finished this piece, I used the confidence with crinoline to make a custom hat for Melbourne Cup last year.

The second half of the course is making crinoline spirals, and I think I like that look best, but I'm still working on blinging that piece to the moon and back before you get to see it!

I am looking forward to trying out some of the leather techniques on some alternative vegan leathers, but in the meantime, I tried this technique on a scrap of fake snakeskin that I had been keeping for approximately a million years. I like the texture it brings and I'm happy to have finally used it.

Although there's still more left.

It's far from perfect, and if you've been following along on Instagram you would have seen that this took a few goes to get just right, and it spent a long time sitting on a mannequin before I decided what to do, but it's been a great learning experience. I look forward to sharing more of them with you!

So what do you think of this alternative take on the face veil?

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Learning: Lace Millinery

After making a start on ribbon embroidery, my next learning experience for the year was lace millinery. I finished my first piece using the technique before I had the baby, but I put off sharing the results, hoping to have a nice photo shoot first. That hasn't happened, and I'm already almost finished the second piece using this technique, so I decided to just share anyway! Edie (the mannequin) is a pretty good model, after all.

The class is an online one, offered through Hat Academy and taught by Melbourne milliner Brett Morley. The full Lace Millinery deluxe course is three lessons, and I have actually only bought the first of the lessons (you can buy individually or the whole lot together), Lace Millinery Fundamentals.

There are many different ways of working with lace in millinery, but Brett's work using these techniques is particularly stunning. He taught this method at the 2014 International Millinery Forum, and I was interested, but didn't end up doing the class. Then I had seriously regret!

Ever since I saw this course on Hat Academy, I've been coveting it, and finally decided to treat myself this year.

I'm really glad I did. As well as being generally excited to be learning something new, I love the results I achieved on my first try, and I'm enjoying experimenting more.

The downside to the method is that it is very slow. Every piece of lace that you see here as a petal or leaf is individually cut out and sewn on to a wire support. This is extremely time-consuming. On the plus side, it is all hand sewing and able to be made in small increments of time (great for the work-from-home-mum). I did a lot in front of the TV in the evenings and even some at the breakfast and dinner table.

I like that the look of the pieces can be very modern and very artistic, but also very vintage and classic. Another plus is that because each petal is wired, they can be shifted and shaped at any point, and altered after making to suit the wearer.

My second lace millinery project is a combination of skills from this class and another from Hat Academy, and I'm really excited to show you that one soon, plus yet another. All these new skills are very exciting!

What do you think? Are you a fan of online learning? (It sure is great for these baby-busy years for me!)