About a year ago, I decided I wanted to include my millinery repertoire to include hats made from sinamay, a woven straw fabric. Sinamay is supposedly very easy to block as its open weave makes it easy to stretch and pull on the bias. When I went to buy some, I fell in love with a novelty textured sinamay called Medley Tuft. Here, instead of a grid, straw fibers in two colors swirl around randomly to make a straw cloth with a funky texture. I didn’t realize until the sinamay arrived that the unusual weave made it much more difficult to work with, especially blocked on its own without a regular sinamay. So it sat in my supply box for a year while I tried to figure out what to do with it.
Then I started making my Peace Hat collection, and I saw the Medley Tuft sinamay in a new light. Why, all those random bits of straw woven together looked just like a bird’s nest! And so my bird’s nest fascinators were born!
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| Orange bird nest fascinator |
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| Blue bird’s nest fascinator |
The Many Hats of Celeste Bocchicchio-Chaudhri 