Birdcage Beanie DIY

I have a fun winter DIY for y'all today.

When I first saw Chiara in this hat last year, I was smitten. 

And of course I started to see the hats popping up all over the place once designers began jumping on board.

It is so perfectly me.  I love a fun, fancy hat...

And as evidenced in my wedding photos, I love a birdcage veil.

But y'all know me.  I am not paying full price for anything, even if it is so perfectly me.  Especially when I can make it myself.  So, I decided to do just that.

Here are some more of my inspiration pics.

BCBG

Notorious

Happily Grey

My supplies:
A hat (Walgreens $8)
Thread (I used navy so that you could see my stitches in the pictures)
Needle
3 pom poms (the largest I could find were not big enough so I sewed three together to make one large pom)
Russian netting

I used the Russian netting off of a hat I wore for a Halloween costume a few years ago but you can get the netting here.

First I stitched all three poms together.  

I then stiched the pom onto the top of the hat. I made them very easy to remove because I wanted to be able to change up the look of the hat easily. You don't have to even have a pom on top at all if you prefer.

Now for the netting.  It is important to decide how you want you netting to lay across your face.  I wanted mine at an angle for drama.  As you can see in the above inspiration photos, there are many ways to do it.  Put the hat on and play with the netting to figure out exactly where you want it to lay.

I started by running a weaving the needle in and out of the netting up one side and then pulling it tight.  I then tied a knot in the netting to make it easy to work with.  I repeated it on the other side.

I then sewed each end onto the back of the hat.  I did one end higher than the other so that it would lie diagonally across my face.

Once the netting was attached to the hat, I decided that I wanted to loosely stich the top of the netting to the hat so that there was less pouf and more control in the netting.  You do not have to do this.  That is the great thing about this hat.  There are a million ways to customize it.  I didn't have enough netting on hand to make the netting go all the way up to the poms so I opted for a look like in the Notorious pic.  It gave it a little more attitude rather than the demure look.  But it looks cute either way.  Up to you.

The final product.

Not until I had finished the hat did I think to look for an existing DIY online.  I found this one for the Jil Sander version.  She does a great job of easily breaking down how to get the straight across look.  Like I said, I wanted a diagonal look so it took a little fidgeting with.  She also used French netting.  You can find all the different kinds of the netting on Etsy. 

Jil Sander version = around $500
My version = $10 (for hat and poms.  I already had everything else)

I wore this hat while volunteering at a Candlelight Christmas Festival at the Dallas Heritage Village.  The folks there really appreciated to drama of the hat. I cannot wait to dress this hat up for some fun Christmas events I have coming up, it is such an easy and fun way to add glamour to your night.

Happily Holidaying it,

tbg