All posts tagged: hatmaking

Aline’s bonnet part II

So, Monday I told you about beginning Aline’s bonnet, and getting all the basic construction done.  Here are the finishing details. After cutting the brim down a lot, I bound it with blue and white tartan bias ribbon (from Nana, her stash is the gift that gives and gives!) that I folded into bias tape. I like the way it works with Aline’s skirt fabric, without matching exactly.  And it’s hard to find two tartans that work with each other! I sewed a piece of florists wire under the the bias tape around the upper brim of the bonnet, to help it hold the tight curve of Aline’s bonnet and my inspiration bonnet.  First I zig-zagged on the wire, and then bound it with the bias tape.  The tension of pulling the wire through the machine actually curved it into the perfect curve. The brim didn’t hug the face enough once it was bound, so I ended up taking in little pleats where the brim meets the back of the hat and tacking them down …

Beyond hats: making a bonnet

A looooooong time ago, when I first made Aline’s By the Seashore ensemble, I really fretted about the hat. I tried to figure out what kind of hat it was, and how I was going to make it.  And then I put it in the too-hard basket. And then I saw this adorable little bonnet thingee at the Met: And I said to myself “Hey, that’s really cute!” And then I checked out the other views of the bonnet, and I said “Hey, that looks a lot like Aline’s hat”   And since it’s three years later, and I’ve acquired a lot more experience, or at least a lot more hubris, I thought, “Hey, I’ll give it a try.” I had this brilliant idea (which, for once, did turn out to be brilliant) to make a mock-up in brown paper.  Simpler than sewing one, and paper is already stiff. It worked surprisingly well, and while my first mock-up wasn’t great, it really showed what I needed to tweak: I cut down the crown a lot, …