Every Pirate Needs a Fancy Hat

As this image of the actor Johnny Depp in one of the Pirates of the Carribbean movies shows, every pirate needs a fancy hat.  (If you haven't seen the first movie, rent it.  Depp's acting is even more amazing than his hat.)

Unstitched Hat

Patt and Lee's Pirate Cat is no exception. This is what the hat looked like unstitched.  It has a skull on the front and fancy trims around the edge of the brim.  I decided that the red and gold trim should be separated by a white line that recedes, so my first step was to stitch the white area in tent stitches.  I used #8 perle cotton.

Remember how my first step in stitching this canvas, even before I put it on stretcher bars, was to make copies of it in black and white and also in color?  I pulled out one of the black and white copies and carefully cut out the shape of the hat without the lines of brim trim. (I used my paper cutting scissors for this, not my good embroidery scissors.)  I then laid the paper pattern on top of the painted canvas hat area and made sure it was correct.  Then I used the paper pattern to cut out a piece of navy blue Ultrasuede.

White Trim and Navy Ultrasuede

Laying the Ultrasuede on top of the painted canvas, I did a little trimming (with my best embroidery scissors this time) to make the Ultrasuede the exact size to fit without covering up any of the trim. Using a sharp beading needle and DMC cotton floss in the same shade of navy, I stitched the Ultrasuede to the canvas.  In the photo above you can see a few of the stitches but not many. The color match between the Ultrasuede and the DMC cotton was almost perfect, which is what you want so that the stitches don't show.

Then I pulled out the colored copy of my canvas and looked at the skull.  Because Patt and Lee canvases are as close to stitch painted as a printed design can be, it was easy for me to count the four stitches at the top of the skull.  Four stitches equals a row of four beads.  I strung them on my navy cotton floss and attached the row in approximately the correct place on the Ultrasuede.  Back at the copy of the canvas, I counted a row of six stitches under the top row of the skull area.  So I added six beads below the first row.  Etcetera!

Beaded Skull and Red Trim

This is what I ended up with.  In this photo you can see where I used outline stitch to add the red trim to the edge of the hat brim,  There's just a glimpse of the gold trim at the right side of the photo. I ran out of time last night (the electricity was out for three hours yesterday) and didn't quite finish trimming the hat.

I'll work on the cat face next.  I want it in place before I stitch the blue bandanas.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow