Tried my hand at creating an 18th Century Poke from a straw cap!
I started out with a High Crown Straw Hat from Jas. Townsend & Sons, Inc. for $14 (Get your own here!) But I bet you can find them all over the place. I spent about $13 everything else, I got 3 yards of a solid green ribbon and 3 yards of a frilly white lace.
I started out buy cutting 5 feet off of my green ribbon. (You have to give yourself plenty of space to line the diameter of the hat and still have enough to tie it beneath your chin. 5 feet ended up being just about perfect!) I hot glued it all of the way across, keeping it tight against the corners of the crown. I put a little extra glue at the edges of the at since that's where most of the tension will be.
Next, I moved in about 4 inch segments hot gluing the white lace around the border. I didn't cut it beforehand so I had a ton to work with. I positioned it so that the middle seam was right against the edge of the hat so that some of the frill hung over the edges.
I positioned the seam in a random place toward the back and then glued all of the edges together to try and hide it.
I used my remaining 4 feet of green ribbon to wrap around the crown. I chose where I wanted to position my bow and centered the ribbon opposite of that spot. I glued it down as best I could but like you can probably tell, it gathered it a couple places.
I added another layer of the lace centered at the base of the green ribbon, and glued the ends behind my bow.
Trimmed the edges of my straps and added a few flowers to the front.
Done!
