Going Bananas...

over sinamay... well, it is made from abaca fibres, after all.  I've now got three bits of pink sinamay bias.  I'd forgotten how scratchy this part of the process is.  I can usually give you some sort of comparison, to put it into context, but there's nothing equivalent.  Imagine working with very stiff hessian, perhaps.  It does what it's told...eventually...but its edges are not pleasant to work with.  And it gets caught on your clothes, sigh.  The image gives you an idea of what you get from a cut strip of this size.  If you think it's narrower than you would expect from 'normal' fabric, you'd be right; once it's folded, you tug it slightly, which makes it longer and thinner, easier to work with. 

I had three pieces cut, well, six in all, because sinamay is used doubled or even tripled, to make three pieces.  The key words for this are stretch and smooth...you'll see why as the process progresses.  To make fascinator bases, the sinamay is stretched flat on the dolly, working to get it as smooth as possible against the curves of the block...

As with all fabric, it is stretched across the diagonals, first, and then more pins are added...and taken out...and re-added... to get as smooth a result as you can manage.  Working with 3 dimensions, as you do with normal hat blocks, uses the same principle, but is even more fiddly...again, starts with the diagonals, and then additional pins are added.

You can see from this image how fiddly this is... the fabric is being stretched on a curve, so pretty much every time you add another pin, there's more excess fabric to be stretched out.  Eventually, you get to this...

Not perfect, but good enough for practice.  Here's the upshot of my morning's work...

These have to dry, first, then I'll decide what shapes to make the respective fascinators (probably a circle and a tear drop shape), and draw that lightly onto the top layer in pencil, before taking them off the dolly and wiring them.  The other shape will be removed from the block and wired.

That lot took about an hour, my limit, really... so now for a bit of a rest...  It does feel like going back to square one, in many ways, but at least I can remember what to do... and I have books for reference.