playing with pretty things

Happy Monday, y'all! Hope everyone had a great weekend! The weather here was fantastic, if a little warm, and Charlie and I made it out for some fun and unexpected outings. Good times had by all, and I'll have plenty more to write about that all later.

step 1: begin visualizing the final product by laying everything together - preferably with the added inspiration of pretty spring flowers!

For today, we're talking arts & crafts again. Specifically - it's time for more customized, up-cycled, whatever-you-want-to-call-it DIY-improved off the rack fly bonnets.

i like that this cord gives the blue bonnet a 'sporty' feel

Brita was expressing frustration at finding cute bonnets at a reasonable price in her colors that fit the horse. And remembering what fun I had in creating the bridal-themed bonnet for Rachael last year, I obviously was eager to step in and help Brita in this endeavor.

the black bonnet will have a fancier feel to it with the beads

Brita went ahead and ordered the cheapest bonnets she could find on Amazon in her colors (I believe these are by Intrepid International and cost about $8 each), and handed them over for me to do my thing.

My thing, incidentally, being to follow along pretty closely with the guide as laid out by this earlier post. So if you're looking for step-by-step instructions and a list of materials on how to do something similar, check out that post.

but of course, before anything else can happen, those godforsaken tassels have gotta go

Brita wants two bonnets: a royal blue bonnet with hot pink accents for the jumping phases, and a black bonnet with blue / pink accents for dressage. She expressed an interest in using cord for accents, but basically set me free to proceed as I saw fit.

these are cheapo kinda crappy off the shelf bonnets.... but even just taking the fringe off makes such a big difference!

Obviously sometimes you're kinda limited by available materials, but I was lucky to find a lot of nice, sturdy cord in great colors for the blue bonnet. And actually came upon some beads that, while not hot hot pink, seemed like a potentially great fit for the black bonnet.

the above shows how simple upcycling one of these bonnets can be. you can literally just staple some string to it and get a better looking, fully custom (but still economically efficient) bonnet!

I'm not entirely sure yet about how the black bonnet will work out, since it remains as yet unfinished. But I went ahead and restrung the beads on wire (hot pink, natch) to hopefully reinforce and safeguard against breakage or accidents.

This also helps lend structure to bonnets that would otherwise be.... kinda gelatinous, amorphous blobs of bad crochet lol.

still not sure how the beads will work. they are pretty tho!

I couldn't find good cord in the right shade of blue to go along with the dressage bonnet, but am thinking the throatlatch from the blue bonnet (which I cut off bc ugh, just say no, kids) might do the trick. It's a little plain-jane in comparison to the sparkles and beads, but we'll see.

#needsmoarsparkles

I'm going to have to experiment a little bit to see what I end up liking the most visually for that bonnet. And naturally will probably post again once it's done, showing the steps and how I got there.

the nice thing about all these materials is that they're VERY forgiving

For the purposes of today's post, we've got the start-to-finish process for the blue bonnet. And a collection of representative photos showing the various components coming together.

The cord was surprisingly easy to work with - very easy to stitch through, and nice and sturdy. I burned the cut ends to prevent fraying, then just started stitching all three colors of cord down to the crystal grid material as a base.

the crystal grid material makes straight lines a breeze

This part got a little finicky towards the "peak" of the bonnet. Much like in the bridal bonnet, I used three separate pieces of the crystal grid material to create the right shape, and just sewed the cord down on top.

it took a little care making the bend happen tho

I had sewed the first long straight edge together before the crystal grid material was cut to size, but then sewed together the second long edge after pre-measuring and cutting to size a matching section of the grid material. If I were doing it again - I would have waited to trim that second piece too bc keeping the grid material whole meant that things stayed a little straighter while sewing.

as always, it's recommended that you have canine (or feline) supervision on hand at all times. ya know. just in case!

So the two long edges of the trim ended up looking slightly asymmetrical. Oh well tho - it's hardly noticeable and will likely disappear visually entirely once it's actually on the horse in motion.

esp if there happens to be a gray face handy to test that the colors are on point

Once the cord was fully attached to the three pieces of crystal grid material, the whole thing got sewed into place on the bonnet itself. This was maybe actually the easiest part - again bc that crystal grid material is so great to work with.

Just a few quick swoops of the needle and thread (knotting often to protect from the whole thing falling apart) and BAM, bonnet was complete!

real question tho: who wore it better?!?

Personally I prefer the look of leaving some of the original crochet as "trim" outside of the decorative accents I just created, as opposed to putting my decorations right on the edge of the bonnets.

and ta da! final product submitted for reline review!

I like this look bc I often feel like these bonnets can look a bit big, or over-sized on the horse. By bringing the design in off the immediate edge, it helps give the otherwise blobby-bonnet more structure, and actually reduces the impression of the bonnet's size. Bc nobody likes the "blanket on a face" look haha.

the sparkles underneath are subtle but perfectly catch the light so that the whole thing pops from a distance. perfect!

Plus obviously I just like adding sparkles to everything - really helps catch the light, right??

Honestly I'm pretty pleased with how this bonnet turned out and can't wait to get it over to Brita and Bella! We've got another show this weekend so I'll be sure to get lots of pictures of the bonnet in action!

And fingers crossed the black bonnet comes together as nicely and easily. I suspect the beads may be a little bit fussier than the cord, but maybe not. We'll see!

Are you into the fly bonnet look? Think you'll give the DIY-decorating a try yourself? Or do you prefer to simply buy nicer bonnets off the rack? Or maybe you've actually gone the full custom route from a professional?

Do you like to keep the aesthetics simple, or are you into all of the colors and all of the sparkles all of the time?