DIY Harry Potter: Beauxbatons Fleur Delacour Hat

My favorite parts about dressing up are the tiny details that add to the costume. There are also parts to the costume that make it the most recognizable. This is true for the costume of Fleur Delacour in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter #4). When the Beauxbatons Academy arrives with their blue dresses sashaying behind them and magical butterflies surrounding their twirls, it's the Beauxbatons' hats that add the detail and make their costumes perfection.

This is what you'll need to make your own custom Fleur Delacour Beauxbatons hat:

Materials
1.) Wool felt capeline -or- wool felt hood (Jedrzejko)
2.) Flower hat shaper (I got "The Flower" hat shaper from hatshapers.com)
3.) Blue Dye (I used Rit liquid dye in "Denim Blue" from Walmart. Just make sure it matches your dress fabric, unless your wool felt already matches it)
-or-
Rustoleum Satin Wildflower Blue Spray Paint. Pick either the dye or the paint. Honestly, the results are similar. I like how my dyed hat felt smooth, but I like how my sprayed hat's brim turned up on one side and stayed there.

Honestly, I think the hat is the key to making the perfect costume. And it really is easier than I thought to make a hat. I watched a ton of videos on YouTube on how to do it from scratch - like they take this thready looking wool felting stuff that you had to pull and layer and layer and let dry and . . . it seemed like such a lengthy and expensive process when you can just buy a pre-shaped hood or capeline like these for between $10-15:

White Wool Felt Capeline from Jedrzejko - notice how this one already flares out. 

Light Blue Wool Felt Hood from Jedrzejko (these are cheaper than capelines, but are harder to shape/stretch)

I bought a capeline and a hood to test out so I could see which looked better. I think they work equally well - it all just depends on your fabric color. I bought an off-white hood (C578) and a blue (525) hood/cone from Jedrzejko because I wasn't sure of the color hues. I ended up spray painting the blue one because the color wasn't close enough to my fabric, but I think the light blue one is actually perfect in color if you compare to the movie. The off-white one, I dyed first.

Step 1: Dye your fabric. Since my fabric was a different blue than any of the capeline colors I could find, I planned on dying it. I just followed the instructions on the Rit bottle (3 gallons of boiling water, 1 cup vinegar, and half the bottle of dye). I used this big black canner because they recommend not using a pot that you cook in. Honestly, as long as you wash the pot really well afterwards (you could boil soap and water in it when you're done), I don't see a problem with using it for dying. 

If your sink water is really hot, boiling the water may not be necessary.
I just added mine to the really hot water.

It's a little scary to place the white wool into the pot, but it works really well. If for some weird reason, your dying fails, all hope isn't lost. Just jump to my alternative spray painting method (Step 5).

I swirled it around in my big black canner/pot and then let it sit for about 30 minutes. I probably could have left it for about 10 minutes and it might not have gone so dark, but I still like it. After your dye soak is done, rinse the capeline/hood until the water is clear.

Step 2: If your wool felt is already the right color, just boil some water and stick your hood/capeline in it. Otherwise, dye it first. Once the wool felt is completely wet, take it out and put on your hatshaper. You can buy just about any hat shaper from hatshapers.com! I found this one (called the flower). It is made from this really hard plastic stuff, super durable and easily reusable.

Flower hat form/hat shaper from Hatshapers.com

Step 3: Then the fun part! Pull and press with your hands until the hat fits the shape of the hat shaper. I probably spent 15-20 minutes doing this. The hardest part is getting the top to fit to the tip of the hat shaper. I ended up using my iron on a steam setting to get it perfect.

Once it is close to the shape you want, tie some yarn, ribbon or fabric around the part right before it flares to help it hold it's shape.

All I had on hand to wrap around the hat shaper was some wool yarn.
A large rubber band or even a strip of fabric would work well too.

Step 4: Let it dry. This can take a day or two. I used a couple of hand towels to soak up as much water as possible to speed up the process. 

Step 5: Trace a nice edge along the brim (I used a piece of chalk) and trim off any excess. (If you dyed it from white, you might have to use a marker or a little more of the dye to paint the edge where you cut it off. My dye didn't completely penetrate the wool, so I just used a tooth brush and a little more of the dye with water and painted along the edge. I used an old wet rag to rinse off the dye and let the hat sit back on the hatshaper for the edge to dry.

Step 5 (alternative to dying): Once that hat is shaped and dried, if you didn't dye it or the color is quite what you wanted, spray paint it! I used the same paint as I used to make my shoes. 

I spread out some newspaper in my garage, removed the hat from the hat shaper and sprayed just the outside. I waited about an hour and then spray painted the underside of the brim. I didn't paint the inside of the hood. I used my hands to turn up the brim on one side before it completely dried and used some crumpled newspapers to keep it tilted while drying. I think this was the key to capturing the turned up edge.

Step 6: Wear it! You hat may not tip up on one side like Fleur's in the movie. If you end up spray painting your hat (it works surprisingly well on wool felt), the hat will become stiffer. I also had some stiffener on hand for the hat I dyed (it was basically a starch spray) that I used just on the inside of the hat. You can also use mod podge painted on the inside, but I was worried it might soak through the hat so I didn't try it.

I couldn't have made the hat without this shaper from www.hatshapers.com.

If you want to get Fleur's wand, you can order it from AliExpress here.
I bought the metal core one ($12.99) because I was worried about it breaking.

I hope your hat turns out. Let me know if you find any more tips or tricks while making yours! And don't forget to check out my Fleur Delacour Beauxbatons Shoes and Fleur Delacour Beauxbatons Dress and Capelet instructions (including a free pattern for the collar and cuffs)!

XoXo,

Fleur

aka Robin

(and my little Dobby too)