Cloche to the end!

I've almost finished my first ever hat at Millinery class at Maudies Millinery. My teacher supplied this lovely fine vintage straw hood for my first foray into hat making.
This picture shows my steamed and blocked hood (stretched on a wooden head shape) which as you can see is a traditional style cloche (french for bell). 
You can see I have curved the small brim up slightly on one side and have started to wire the brim so it will keep it's shape. 
As I wired the brim I pulled the wire up slightly to assist with the front curve.
Sewing the wire along the brim seemed to take forever but not as long as covering the edge of the brim with grosgrain ribbon which was a bit fiddly. Because you are sewing around a curve you have a bit of a pucker going on as you sew and keeping that evenly distributed was a challenge. (I imagine it will be worse on the stays when I get that far but then the binding for that won't be quite as wide.) It was also fiddly because you only pick up the end of each picot so that your stitches are as unnoticeable as possible.
Then it was time to add the head band around the inside which didn't take long thankfully because I couldn't wait for the fun bit!  The trimming!

I settled on some old ivory 4.5 inch wide silk ribbon (which is shattering but I don't mind a touch of Miss Haversham), a lovely old lace applique that was salvaged from a vintage dress and a vintage rhinestone dress clip because I like a little bit of bling.  

Actually I spent more time just looking at my trimmings than trying out any specific ideas. I didn't want to destroy the silk before I got it on the hat.
And then it all just came together.

I have the silk draped up and over one side and then folded to make a vandyked type of drape across the back and up the other side. The dress clip is on one side and the lace applique on the other.
I didn't want to cover up too much of the lovely fine straw.
The grosgrain edging looks paler in the photos than it does in real life.
Here is the other side view.
And that lace applique is just perfect. In fact it was all just meant to be as far as I'm concerned. 
And last but not least the view from the front.


I have to make the lining to be glued inside this week and then I can wear it! 
Yay a completed project which I am over the moon about. Yay Yay Yay!