Projects & Thoughts from Louise's head & hands

LA South Towns Show Chorus was hosting a tea and invited guests to wear fantastic hats.  My idea was to create a hat that looked like a table set for tea.  I assembled wrapping paper, a gift bag, child’s tea set, cardboard, glue and scissors and got to work.

After determining the width of the brim of the hat I cut the cardboard.  Then I cut a hole in the middle of the cardboard for my head.

I traced the shape of the cardboard onto the back side of each piece of wrapping paper, making the paper larger than the perimeter of the cardboard so the wrapping paper would overhang (more about this in a moment).  The patterned paper was for the top of the hat, so it would look like a tablecloth.  The solid colored paper was for the underside of the hat.

I traced the opening for the hole for my head onto the wrapping papers.  I cut this hole in slots that I then folded over the cardboard to make a clean looking edge where only paper was visible, not cardboard.

The top paper was glued in place overhanging the sides of the cardboard.

I partially disassembled the fancy gift bag. The bag looked like a bouquet of flowers, ideal for the centerpiece of my table and as a method for hiding the top of my head popping through the table. The bag was secure to the cardboard with clear packing tape through the head hole so it would stay upright.

Then I glued the underside, solid colored paper to the bottom of the cardboard. This covered up the packing tape holding the gift bag in place.

Next I cut the overhanging paper in a way that traced and accentuated the patterned paper. It draped off the corners of the cardboard, looking like a tablecloth.

From extra patterned paper I cut some of the flower pattern and glued it to the underside of the hat. This carried through the color and design theme to the underside and would make it more interesting near my face.

Here are photos showing the bag attached to the cardboard, already covered at this point with the wrapping paper, and the decorative edge of I cut into the “tablecloth”:

The underside of the table hat is decorated with flowers and vines cut from the patterned paper:

The tea set and paper napkins were taped into place on the table. The hat was complete and ready for the fashion runway!

The hat was a show stopper and won “Biggest Hat”. I am tall so ladies couldn’t see the top of my hat unless I was bent at the waist or sitting down. I did a lot of bowing that night so they could see my hat set for tea.