Making One Hat from Two!

Sometimes I get tired of perusing thrift shops and ebay and etsy for the perfect hat base that I "need" for a loose re-creation. In these cases I canalization existing hats. Case in point, the hat I want to wear with Ruth's Butter Yellow Tea Suit. I think that this hat is so beyond fabulous! A very demure, lovely, quiet butter yellow ribbon, sitting very primly atop a chapeaux is the perfect foil to very obnoxious red/orange poppies! How stunning and unexpected! After spending way too much time and gas trying to find a natural straw hat to use for this project, I decided to take two small vintage open weave straw hats and turn them into a large Teens hat. Here are the steps if you want to give it a try!
1. Take the hat apart. This involved getting the strips of straw apart...seam ripper and scissors came in handy.
2. Decide to leave the crown of the larger hat in tact to act as the crown for the new hat
3. After getting the strips of straw separated, I soaked them in warm water for about 10 minutes. This made them pliable and got the sizing (solution applied to straw during the forming process to hold the hat's shape) out.
4. Hang strips over shower door to allow excess water to drip off
5. Form crown of hat...soak in warm water and, in this case, formed over an antique fruit crock.
6. In an oven set at 170 degrees, crown is allowed to dry out quickly (I have zero patience when I make a hat...I want it done now!)
7. When crown is ready, the sewing on of the straw strips and forming of the brim begins. With this straw, I set the strips UNDER the existing strips about 1/4 inch and sewed it on until the brim was 4.5" all the way around.
8. Set still damp hat in the oven again to dry!

That's it! Pretty simple, just a bit time consuming! Next step, hit Hobby Lobby for the obnoxious poppies!!!