Yesterday I showed you some lovely extant Victorian parasols that I looked at for inspiration in re-covering a long-handled polyester parasol I bought at Valhalla last weekend.
This is the original:
Here's what I did with it.
I have one thing to say about covering parasols - it's harder than it looks!
I took the black cover off and used one of the triangles as a pattern, and cut my triangles from some changeable taffeta scraps I had in the cabbage patch. All was going well, but getting the cover on the wire frame was rather a pain, and then the top was all baggy. Now that I think about it, I'm sure my mistake was with the placement of the edges of my cover - my triangles were slightly longer, but my placement of them was right on the edge. This caused the tension at the top to be incorrect.
In the manner of Tim Gunn, though, I just made it work and I'm pretty happy with it, even if it is not the beautiful, taught masterpiece it was intended to be!
We saw these long-handled parasols everywhere at the Carson Rendezvous yesterday, for about $11-$12. You can order one online, in a variety of colors, from Vintage Dancer, for about the same.
If I had this to do again, I would probably leave the polyester cover on, and apply my decoration over it...or maybe just be more diligent about the cutting, seaming, and stretching!
This is the original:
Here's what I did with it.
I have one thing to say about covering parasols - it's harder than it looks!
I took the black cover off and used one of the triangles as a pattern, and cut my triangles from some changeable taffeta scraps I had in the cabbage patch. All was going well, but getting the cover on the wire frame was rather a pain, and then the top was all baggy. Now that I think about it, I'm sure my mistake was with the placement of the edges of my cover - my triangles were slightly longer, but my placement of them was right on the edge. This caused the tension at the top to be incorrect.
In the manner of Tim Gunn, though, I just made it work and I'm pretty happy with it, even if it is not the beautiful, taught masterpiece it was intended to be!
We saw these long-handled parasols everywhere at the Carson Rendezvous yesterday, for about $11-$12. You can order one online, in a variety of colors, from Vintage Dancer, for about the same.
If I had this to do again, I would probably leave the polyester cover on, and apply my decoration over it...or maybe just be more diligent about the cutting, seaming, and stretching!
