Look what I've got!
Unfortunately, I have no good way of displaying it but this but it is a rather nice lady's hat.
It was given to me by my mother and grandmother last week. They told me they had paid a visit to a friend of my grandmother's (who is between them in age) who is now volunteering for a charity which also has a shop. This hat had been brought in and she had put it aside, recognizing it as a good thing but knowing it wouldn't sell. So, my mother and grandmother got to take it along for me, knowing that I would appreciate it.
My mother thought it was decorated with peacock feathers but I suspect those lovely dark brown feathers with their iridescent deep green shine came from a smaller bird. A cockerel I think. Two kinds of feathers are alternated around the outside of the hat, circling a crown made of deep brown velvet. The lining is very clean and the elastic un-stretched. This hat looks like it has never been worn.
Of course, I should wear it. It's a continuing issue of mine: I love hats as an idea, but I tend to struggle to actually wear them. For this hat, I will have to figure out a hairstyle that works with it. It looks like a 1950's style so it was probably meant to be worn with shortish hair. I think a low bun would work too.
Maybe I could construct an outfit around it... I have quite a bit of dark green wool in my stash. I have often thought about turning that into a 1950's style tailleur suit... Maybe I should do that now. The green might match the shine of those feathers and I think this hat seems like the kind of style to wear with a dressy suit in autumn...
If you've just found my blog, welcome! I hope you won't be disappointed. Spectacular structured and draped dresses are part of my repertoire but most of the time, I make more ordinary things.
Today, I thought I'd show you some hats I finished just before I started to work on the party dress (but I didn't get a chance to take pictures straight away).
There's the cut-and-sew fedora for which I took the pattern from a RTW hat. I had plenty of criticism on it in my earlier post but it looks really good in the picture. Better than in real life, I think.
It's definitely worth trying to make an improved version of this one.
Of course, you have already seen the hat I made to go with my suit. I just didn't include a close-up in that post, nor a clear picture of the back, which has the decoration. So here it is.
And then there's a hat you haven't seen yet. When I went to the haberdashery store to get some supplies for the first hat, I also found rolls of thick felt. Synthetic stuff but it still seemed rather suitable for hats. I bought some of it in a lovely bright turquoise colour and decided to use it for a 1920's cloche.
I used this design from Gracieuse magazine.
The pattern looks like this. You were supposed to use something like wool jersey which some kind of millinery net to support the hat shape. I just used the felt, which is pretty thick, and didn't add the scarf.
Making the crown from one piece with five points is very different to anything I've seen in more modern cloche patterns but it seems to have been the standard method according to Gracieuse in the 1920's. I've found three other examples which were constructed in the same way.
I had to enlarge the whole thing by about 2 cm to make it fit my head.
Because the felt was so thick, I decided to cut the pieces without seam allowance and sew them edge to edge by hand. I tried to smooth the shape a bit more by steaming the seams with my iron but that didn't work. This isn't wool which can be shaped by heat and steam but a synthetic fiber. Ironing only made the felt softer so I stopped quickly.
I kind of like the result. It's a fun hat and, like all cloches, practical in that it can't be blown of your head quite so easily. It doesn't really look like a design that's about 90 years old though... but it really is.
And that also makes it another entry for this year's Vintage Sewing Pattern Pledge. The third one. Or maybe the fourth. I'm not sure whether or not the first hat counts as well. That one was made from a pattern which I bought new several years ago and although all the hats in it have an obvious retro flair, Vogue doesn't call it a vintage style pattern (although this pattern may have been printed before vintage was very popular, I think I've had it for about 7 years).
Either way, my progress this year is a lot faster than it was last year. A (pre-New Look) 1940's dress or another go at a 1930's design should be next.
It seems like a long time since I posted a proper, well-considered story. You know, a blog post with a head and a tail. You'll have to excuse me once more. This is another update of random thoughts and project ideas.
I have been sewing. I've finished my suit. There is still an issue with the skirt, which I blame almost entirely on the fabric.
But, with regards to hat making, I gave up on the view of V8008 I started out with. Vogue's shape didn't even approach my head shape (and I don't have a small head, so I'm really surprised at that floppy disk this pattern created) and I didn't like the way those petals looked. Rather that taking all the binding off, tinkering even more with the shape and still end up with a look I didn't like, I cut my losses and went for the pillbox instead. The little pillbox in this pattern is one of those hats that has to perch on you head so there's preciously little fitting involved. It came together easily and will make its debut on the blog with the rest of the suit (in coming weekend, I think).
Flush with this success, I started thinking about other hat styles I might be able to make. (Last year, I considered signing up for a real hat making course, to learn how to block felt and built hats from braids of straw. Budget didn't allow for it, but I'd still love to do it some day).
Some of the vintage magazines in my collection contain patterns for cut-and-sew hats. And then there was the cut-and-sew fedora which I had bought at H&M (in the sale, for 1 or 2 euros) years ago with the purpose of taking it apart and using the pattern.
I've started out with that one.
Unfortunately, I'm well overdue for a hair cut, so all hats look silly right now because they push my fringe over my eyes. Which is why I'm not modeling the hat right now.
The original was a bit big (sized M/L, for a 56 to 60 cm head. Mine is 56 or 57 depending on the desired position of the hat) so I took it in a little bit. I used a cotton/linen blend fabric of which I have a lot and fused all the pieces with mid-weight fusible cotton. The original had an interfacing which seemed to be of a similar weight and this stuff worked well for the pillbox.
With the hat finished, I think I should have gone for the heavy weight fusible cotton instead. At least in this fabric. This hat is softer and more floppy than the RTW original and I don't like how that makes it behave. When put on, it gets a sort of dent at the point where it leaves the head which rather spoils the silhouette. And the crown looks a bit too high anyway.
It's not good but not unwearable. I've made my changes on the pattern and have every intention of trying again. It could also be a very nice hat in winter, made from one of my beloved tweed fabrics...
And then, there are the vintage hat designs. There are two which immediately clamoured for attention in my memory:
This asymmetric cloche from 1928, to be made with or without attached scarf (which is a cool idea but I think the hat would be more practical to me without) for Gracieuse magazine. I first picked this out for my 1920's longlist for last year's Vintage Sewing Pattern Pledge.
And this closed turban from Dameswereld from 1948. Turban style hats can be very nice but most online tutorials are for things which are basically twisted jersey headbands. In the tutorial for this thing, the editors distinguish between 'open turbans' which are fashionable to wear with dresses and 'closed turbans' like this one, which are proper hats and should be worn with outerwear. There is a scaled pattern, text and this drawing on how to tie it. It came with the pattern for a 'topper', a short coat for spring. Hat and coat could be made from the same fabric. Which is helpful information for me when considering fabric for this thing.
Oh, and I haven't entirely given up on the skull cap with decoration thing. I think I'll give up on the Vogue pattern and try to draft my own. I know the tiny fascinators you see in party wear don't need much shaping but I'd like to make mine bigger, more of a vintage style hat...
