Happiness in Hat Pins - Craft of The Month

A vintage accessory I haven't written much about but use often are hat pins. There is not an an awful lot to say about them as they do exactly what it says on the tin and pin your hat to your head.

They are especially useful for older, genuine vintage hats which may have lost their combs or clips, or those that are designed as cocktail hats to be worn with a pin and have no other fastenings.

I am a big believer in making things if you cannot find what you are looking for at vintage sales and whilst I have some genuine vintage hat pins I love, I want to have colour variety in my collections.

Hat Pin Making

You will need:

• Hat pins I got mine on eBay (search Hijab pins if you cannot find them)
• Beads
• Glue

1. When purchasing your hat pins make sure to check the length and the width of the pin you are buying, I bought 126mm long, 1mm wide to allow enough room for some decorative beads without the pin then being too short. Be sure that your pins are "headed" meaning they have a little stopper on the bead end to stop them falling off. and they should have a pin guard on the other end too.

2. Buy your beads and be careful not to buy anything where the opening is of a much bigger size than the pin or they might fall off the end, if your pins width is 1mm then try to buy beads with a 1mm hole. Most good online bead sellers put this info in their description or you could take one of your pins to your local haberdashery and just try them out.

I got my beads at Hobbycraft, they do a bead pot for £3.50 in which you can mix and match your beads so you don't have to buy a bulk of beads that you may not use.

3. Glue - I have a hot glue gun that I use for crafts but if you don't have one make sure you are using a glue that is multi purpose since you will be binding different materials together.

4. Plan your design - make sure you try out different combinations of your beads to find the best fit, try some random combinations to get the creativity flowing.

 
 

 


5. Once you are happy with your design you can carefully glue it into place.

6. Let gravity do some of the work for you and avoid undoing your hard work, I placed mine upside-down in a pot.

7. Voila - now you have hat pins to go with your different outfits.

This is a cheap and easy craft that most people will be able to do themselves at home, you could even get the kids involved then you can then have fun trying them out on all your different hats.

I hope you enjoyed this post, I am planning on bringing you a craft each month based on vintage styles or practices and I've got a long list of things to try already!

Until Next Time
Love
Lucy
xx