“Bra Hats”? Yes! What better way to embrace the fun and sillyness of the RHS by making a hat from a bra!
You quite literally take a bra, and put it on your head to make it into a hat – FABULOUS!!!!!!!
OK, well you might want to also tizzy it up a little, we are Hatters after all and we do like to sparkle with bling! Since you’re not going for something demure and understated here, you want to go LOUD AND PROUD with your spectacular creation you can go fancy and make a real show stopper.
I’ve yet to find a good step by step tutorial that describes how to do it, but here are some tips, links and photo inspiration to help you.
Making a Bra Hat
Start with a bra – Obviously!!! – I’d recommend choosing a push up or solid cup bra with a padded cups, since the they will be nice and perky on your head without needing extra padding or stabilising (half the job’s done already!)
Preferably choose one in red (or pink), so you don’t need to cover it. If not then you’ll want some fabric, or you could try painting it, or dying it.
As for size – that depends on how big you’d like your hat and how close together you’d like the cups to be… I personally have made 2 bra hats, the pink one shown at the top of this page was a D cup bra, and while lovely, it is a larger hat with the cups more to the side of my head. I also have a B cup one (not pictured) where the much smaller cups sit more towards the front of my head, and I think I prefer the look of that. So I’d suggest ideally aim for a B cup for best results.
To make it into a hat, place the centre of the cups on your forehead where you’d like to wear the hat, and mark how far along the back/chest straps you need to cut for them to meet at the back of your head. Leaving a seam allowance – cut the ends off the chest straps and sew them together. – so you’re making the chest part of the bra into an elasticated headband of sorts.
Cut the shoulder straps off, as you won’t need those. You can stop now and decorate the hat, or you can do a few more steps before you decorate.
(optional) sew/glue boning from the bottom of the centre of one cup to the opposite side of the band, and again on the other side – forming a cross over the crown of the head. This helps keep any soft cups looking good, and also gives you a frame onto which you can weave feather boas. If your bra is a solid cup and doesn’t need the support of boning, you could use pipe cleaners just for a frame for the boas.
(optional) If your cups need extra padding to keep their shape, take some pillow stuffing and fill your bra cups, then sew fabric over the top to keep it in place.
Once your basic hat is complete, bling it up with brooches, broken jewellery, rhinestones and anything else that takes your fancy. Weave feather boas around the boning straps to cover the top of your head and give yourself a fabulous feathery mane!
