Next Level Millinery

 In May 2025, I bought two straw panama hats at two different thrift shops.

 

 

 

 

 The untrimmed light straw hat on the left came from Salvation Army thrift shop and cost $2. The brown hat on the right came from a Value Village, cost $7.33, and was trimmed with a narrow band of dull gold grosgrain, which I didn't care for. They did look okay as they were, but I though they both could benefit from being trimmed. 

 

 

 

 

 

As I wrote in this post, I had trimmed another panama hat, bought from Walmart, in a cream grosgrain a year before in the spring of 2024, but I was never really happy with it. It looked amateurishly done. I watched some instructional videos on how to put a grosgrain ribbon on a hat, and found out what I should have done differently. The bow was too big and floppy and on the wrong side (the convention seems to be that hats have their bows on the left side), I stitched the ribbon on wrong so that it was too loose and my stitches showed, and I didn't know that one is supposed to press the ribbon after putting it on the hat. I also learned that I should stitch the band together and slip it over the ribbon, then slide the ends and the bow through it and stitch things in place, rather than trying to stitch the band around everything last.  

 

 

 

 

I ripped the gold ribbon off the brown hat, bought a length of dark brown grosgrain ribbon for $2.55, and retrimmed the hat, implementing the new tips I'd learned from my research. Total cost of hat: $9.88. I was much happier with the finished result than I had been with the hat I did last spring. It looks reasonably professional. 

 

 

 

 

 For the $2 light straw hat, I bought a length of butterscotch-coloured grosgrain ribbon for $10.34 (this was a far less common colour of ribbon than the cream or dark brown and I had to go to a specialty shop), and put it on. Total cost of hat: $12.34. I was also very pleased with how this one turned out.

 

 

 

 

 After I'd finished trimming the two new hats, the first one looked so poorly done by contrast that I ripped the cream grosgrain off the hat I trimmed last year and redid it to the same standard as the other two. 

I try to learn at least one new thing from each project. With this project I not only learned how to put a grosgrain ribbon on a hat, but also that no matter how simple and straightforward a new project might seem, it's a good idea to research it. I'm bound to learn something from my research, and the results will be at least a bit better, and possibly so much better that they're on a completely different level, than if I just try to wing it and figure it out as I go.  

 

 

 

 

 

It feels incredibly self-indulgent to have three such similar hats, but now I always have a hat that goes just right with any summer outfit I happen to be wearing, they didn't cost so very much, and they will last me for years.

Notes on a Sherlock Notebook

My sister Alanna is a big Sherlock fan. Back in 2015, she asked me to make her a "Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes" doll, and I did, giving it to her for Christmas 2016, along with a Sherlock 2017 calendar, vinyl sticker, and a Sherlock notebook folder. I don't think she's ever been more enthusiastic about a gift I gave her than she was about that Sherlock fan girl kit. 

So, when I came across a Sherlock notebook similar to the one you see above on Pinterest, made to look like the front door of Sherlock and Watson's apartment at 221 Baker Street on the BBC show Sherlock, I immediately pinned it to my "For Alanna" Pinterest board, knowing that she'd like it and that I just had to make it for her at some point.

That point came about two weeks ago, when my parents and Alanna were coming to my house for my annual birthday celebration lunch on August 16th. We've been doing this lunch for years now, and we have the arrangements down to a science. Mum and Alanna prepare the lunch between them, bringing nearly everything they need for it in a cooler, and using my kitchen to cook and serve it. I always provide the ice cream to go with the birthday cake one of them has baked, as they have a two-hour drive to make from the little town where my parents live. This year I made homemade blueberry ice cream as a special treat for my father, who loves blueberries and all blueberry desserts. I was surprised at how easy it was to make: it took less than half an hour of work, only ordinary ingredients most of which I already had on hand, and no special equipment. And the results were yummy.   

We also always have quite a grand gift exchange at this lunch. As I usually have not seen my family since Christmas, I give my mother her Mother's Day present, and my father a combined Father's Day and birthday present (his birthday is at the end of August). I get my birthday gifts. Then, because my sister does so much work to make the birthday lunch happen and I hate to have her be the only one who doesn't get a gift, I always give her a token gift of thanks -- something thoughtful, but small and inexpensive, like a thrift shop find or something I've made out of supplies I had on hand. I've been doing this for some years now and the cost of the gift has always been under $6. I've given Alanna a pair of earrings, a Tree of Life keychain, a Game of Thrones cookbook (Alanna is a fervent Game of Thrones fan), a madeleine cookbook (Alanna especially likes baking madeleines), a totebag and matching tissue case I made out of a canopy taken from a broken Burberry umbrella, and a pair of Spode mugs in the "Christmas Tree" pattern (Alanna collects it). 

This year I decided her token gift would be the Sherlock notebook. I've been so useless due to the heat this summer (my house doesn't have AC) that I didn't get around to making the notebook until two days before the lunch, which was my actual birthday. I spent at least half of my fifty-second birthday sweating miserably in my attic workroom while I laboured away on this #$%&! notebook. 

Some notes on the experience: 

-- I used this YouTube video as my guide, and also pulled up a photo of the 221B door from the show to use as a reference. 

-- If you're going to make this notebook, don't let the three minute and seventeen second video I linked to above mislead you. It's hours of work. 

-- The notebook would have looked better with a perfect bound notebook, but when I looked in Dollarama for a notebook, they didn't have a suitable one, so I bought a plain black spiral bound notebook.

-- I expected that once I'd bought the notebook I could do this project with supplies I had on hand. It didn't quite work out that way.   

-- I didn't have cardstock as the YouTuber recommends, so first I tried using foam core board. Which did not go well.

-- I then used nine sheets of coverstock instead, which by my math should be around the same thickness as four sheets of cardstock.

-- Nine sheets of coverstock is actually not easy to cut through. It had been ages since I'd done any paper cutting, so it took a little while for me to summon the knowledge. I could hear my George Brown College art instructor's voice in my head telling me that the way to do it is make a series of light, precise cuts, scoring the paper more deeply each time until I've cut through it, rather than trying to do it one brute force cut, which will look very rough and jagged. 

-- I cut the 221B, knocker, door plate, and lock decals out of an old greeting card. 

-- Cutting the numbers and letter for the door wasn't easy either, as they were so small. I cut out a number of 2s, none of which were satisfactory, until I gave up and just picked the best pair. 

-- The YouTuber recommends buying a gold Sharpie for the decals. I thought I'd just make do with some gold craft paint, only to discover that it only went on the coated greeting card stock like a wash. I bought a gold Sharpie from an art store the next day.

-- Then I discovered that while I could colour the one decal that had been "painted" with the gold paint very well, the marker wouldn't work on the other decals. I then did a base coat of gold craft paint on the other decals to prep it for the Sharpie, and reflected crossly that I probably could have painted them successfully with the craft paint if I'd tried painting it in multiple layers, saving myself the trip to the art store and the expense of the Sharpie when it was the day before my birthday lunch and I had cleaning to do and blueberry ice cream to make.

-- The YouTuber made a door frame, glued it onto the notebook, then painted the entire notebook black, then did the decals, the Mod Podged the notebook. Since my notebook was already black and the shade of black craft paint I was using went well with the black of the notebook, it did not seem necessary to paint the notebook at all. I made the door frame first, including the decals, Mod Podged it, then simply glued it onto the notebook, weighted it down with my volume of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, and left it overnight.  

The result you see above. The notebook looks rougher and more amateurish than I would have liked, but as I told Alanna, the door on the show looks distressed, so it's more artistically accurate this way. 

Alanna seemed very pleased with her little gift, and told me that while the calendar is long gone, she still has the doll, the notebook folder, and the sticker from her fan girl kit, so this new notebook made a nice addition to the set. I was very encouraged with regards to my plan for her Christmas present this year, which involves another fan girl kit for another one of her favourite TV shows. Watch this space for details on that!