My plan was to try to participate in The Historical Sew Monthly Challenges this year but my schedule and my planned Edwardian event in the end of May has made it hard. My planned stash busting project, an Edwardian blouse isn't finished yet (needs buttonholes and the cuffs fixed) and my HSM#1 Foundations project, an Edwardian corset is still in the works too. But I'll guess I've just have to suck it up and post things when they get ready...any ways. I finished this hat yesterday and realized that all the materials in it came from my huge stash, so it is qualified to be entered in this challenge.
The Challenge: HSM #3 Stashbusting, An Edwardian hat
Fabric:Scraps of acetate duchess satin in two shades of purple
A sun bleached and worn sun hat made of paper straw
Pattern: None, made things up as I went along, looking at fashion sketches and photos from the period.
Year: circa 1905
Notions: Home made ostrich plumes, four purple ostrich drabs, two candle rings with mauve roses, some rather thick steel wire, sewing thread in black and purple
and some home made black spray paint.
How historically accurate is it? My materials is 100% modern but the look is accurate so I would say 50%?
Hours to complete: 24 hours
First worn: Will be worn at the event in the end of May
Total cost: Most of the materials are scraps from other projects but I think I once paid about 0.5$ for the candle rings and about 5$ for the hat.
This hat started it's life as a regular sun hat. I used it a lot. It got sun bleached. It started to look worn. It got thrown in my stash for hat base use and I forgot about it. Then last spring I was invited to a suffragett luncheon. I very hastily threw togheter and outfit and made a super quick make over to the hat by makeing a sash out of some duchesse satin fastening it to the hat with osme sticheds and a brooch. Threw in some black plumes that I've made earlier for a 18th century masked ball and scurried away to the lucnheon. This is how the hat (and the rest of my outfit) looked:
I was never 100% happy with either the outfit or the hat. So when the May event came up, I decided that they both needed at make over. My biggest quarry with the hat was it's color, the flimsy brim and the high round hat crown. I started out by solving the color problem. I mixed rubbing alcohol with some artist quality black aceylic paint in a spray bottle and gave the hat a couple of thin coats on both the outside and inside. When it dried, it was even in color (not stark black but even) and it was matte instead of the horrible lustre it had before.
To lover the crown I followed
this excellent tutorial, It worked really well but I think I accidentally made the flat crown piece a tad to big so my crown isn't 100% flat, but I decided that I could live with that.
To take care of the flimsiness of the brim I zig zaged a length of wire around it on the under side. Since this kind of hat needs to look good on both sides of the brim I covered the wire with some bias tape that I made from another duchess satin scrap. Then I started to play around with decorations, I just gathered all the materials I could find in the stash that matched in colour. I quickly realised that I somehow needed to make the brim a bit wider and I also needed to get more of the purple shade that I used for wire covering into the decorations. But how? Extend the edge with bias?
No, just plain bias satin would ble too flimsy...than I tried boxpleating a scarp to the edge...and it looked great! So I quickly made a 5-6 cm wide length of bias strip as long as I could squeeze out of all the scraps (I had to piece several small lengths together) folded it in half, pressed it down and ran a straight stitch a long whole it's length about 7 mm from the edge. Then I took my pinking shears to the sewn edge to get a prettier edge and stop it from fraying. Then the hat rested for a couple of weeks...until yesterday when me and a couple of other costumers met up for hat making day.
Then the brim got it's box pleated trim and the rest of the decorations sewn on. And here are the final result. (I'm madly in love with this hat and I cant wait to wear it!)
