'Hut-Couture'

At the beginning of July my family and I went on a fabulous whirlwind two-week vacation around Germany and Austria.  I, of course, managed to fit in plenty of craft shopping.  I happened across a great yarn store in Munich called Wollkorb, which I understand means 'wool basket'- how cute!  And I did my homework before the trip, so I was very much anticipating a trip to Komolka in Vienna.  I also stocked up on Burda sewing magazines, which I can't read too easily, but I'm happy enough to just look at the pictures.  Hopefully my sewing skills are competent enough to figure out some of the patterns.  Oddly enough, I stumbled across Burda Magazine headquarters in Berlin, too!

And it is from this summer's edition of the Burda Easy magazine that I got the idea for decorating this straw hat, or 'strohut,' as I believe it is in German.  You can even see an example of the crafty strohut on the cover of the magazine.  The magazine features seven different ideas for decorating your own straw hat (including the fabric braid version I made), so I quickly made it my mission to purchase a straw hat while abroad so I could craft one up, myself.  I found this hat easily enough in a cheesy souvenir store in Salzburg for about 6 Euro.  My strohut is now perfectly girly- and the perfect Austrian souvenir.