Something Old into Something New: A Refabbed Hairpiece

As I mentioned in a previous post, my mom and I made my wedding veil out of her old veil.  Something cool to do to have your "something old" made into something that matches your wedding vision.  So for my sister's wedding, she really wanted to reuse my grandma's hairpiece from when she got married.  It went with the somewhat vintage-y feel of her dress and overall vision.  So, I took on the task. It really wasn't hard, it just took some time and playing around to get what she wanted it to look like.  I think this is a great way to incorporate your mother/grandmother's wedding memories into your own special day. Obviously this is very unique and you won't be able to recreate this exactly, but I hope the idea can inspire you!  And p.s. this hairpiece cost maybe $10 in materials- pretty great bargain for something so beautiful!

Here is what I did:

This is what the hairpiece looked like originally.  My sister wanted to reuse the flowery pieces, but turn it into something other than a crown.

 

So, the first thing I did was remove the flowers.  They were essentially glued on (with glue over 50 years old now...), so it was easy to pull them off.  Next, I arranged them into a new shape and stitched them together, as seen below.

 

Once I had the basic shape, I had to go about adding the tulle.  We agreed that her dress would look better with no veil, so instead I wanted to incorporate tulle into the hairpiece.  Luckily, I had some extra tulle from my wedding that I was able to use.  I basically played around with the tulle for awhile, making loops and layers and then stitched it onto the circular shape I had.  I then had something like this:

Once I decided this was what I wanted (and of course ran it by the bride), I finished it off.  I actually got some white felt that I used as a backer (to cover and contain all the lose threads, etc), and cut it into the right shape and hot glued it to the back.  Then I found a hair clip at Michael's (of course), and hot glued that to the back as well.  I then bent the hairpiece into a curved shape so that it would conform to her head better.  I tried it on and it looked fabulous and ready to go. It looked perfect with her dress and was a beautiful addition to her whole look!  Here she is at the reception, check out how great it turned out!