A turban for the steampunk caterpillar

On his first wearing of the steampunk caterpillar my husband lacked a hat.  We simply ran out of time to get a hat completed as well as everything else, but it completely made me nuts.  I love hats and his outfit needed one!  We are planning on wearing the Alice in wonderland outfits again to Wild Wild West Con in Tuscon in a few weeks and I am determined to fix up the few things I hated about our outfits.  First up is the lack of hat on my husband.  The original plan was for an Asian inspired hat to go with the coat, which is Asian inspired.  However, my husband flat refused and said it had to be a turban, so turban it is.  I also felt the hat need antennae, since it is a caterpillar and I wanted the antennae to light up.  The event has night concerts and lighted props are so much fun at the concerts. 

First problem, my husband wanted ridiculously long antennae! So the antennae had to be sturdy and stabilized to his head.  I decided the easiest solution was to buy a baseball cap from a local craft store (they are super cheap, less than $3).  Most baseball caps have interfacing in the front to stabilize them, so it should provide enough support for the antennae.  I then unpicked the seams that held in the brim in place.  Once the brim was removed, I stitched the sweat band back in place.  The baseball cap was adjustable, so we adjusted it to my husband's head size.  I built the antennae out of a coathanger and then stitched them to the hat. 

To make the antennae look less like a hanger, I stitched tubes out of bias tape that were 1.5 times the length of the wire.  After I slipped the tube over the wire, I added the lights to the end of the wire.  The light is the clearish thing at the end of the blue tube to the left.  These lights flash multiple colors and had a loop at the back for wearing them on a string.  I ran the wire through the loop and bent the wire back to lock the lights in place.  The lights hang down a bit and can move slightly since I did not want the wire too tight or I feared I would break the plastic loop on the light.  I wanted to add some dimension to the fabric tubes, since the looked like thin fabric over wire.  I did this by hand beading the bias tube and using the stitches between beaded areas to gather the tube a bit.  To hide the ugly end if the bias tube and the loop of wire, I made fringe out of a scrap of fabric, wrapped the fringe around the end and hand stitched it into place.  You can see the fringe in the picture to the left. 

Once the antennae were ready, I covered the ball cap base with blue brocade to make a turban.  Basically, I cut a yard of fabric in half.  Serged the edges to one half and used that the cover between the antennae and make the upper part of the turban.  I then made a tube out of the remaining half yard of fabric.  I ran a strip about 12 inches wide of cotton fabric through the center of the tube to give it a bit more body.  I then twisted the tube and wrapped it around the bottom of the hat.  I basically just played with the fabric until I was happy with it.  After I was happy with it, I stitched all of the fabric to the ball cap by hand.  The decoration at the front is made from a broken earring I had lying around and a feather plume I got from the floral department of the local craft store.  Anyway, here is the finished turban!  I think my husband will like it, since he wont actually have to tie a turban each time he wears it and the antennae really are rather big.  He is likely going to have to get used to ducking for doorways in this.