Millinery Course - Week 8

So, the penultimate week has been and gone and I can’t believe it’s almost over!

Where to start? Well, I’d rushed out the door that morning and forgotten my trimmings for my straw hat (you may recognise these when they turn up – a certain cream and black polka dot sinamay which I just happened to buy too much of and produced a fantastic hat with from a fabric pattern last week). I was really cross with myself as I needed that for this week.

So what did I do? I resurrected the swirly hat plan . I got a plain black hood, marked a circle on the top, then a 2” wide spiral all the way down it. I cut along the spiral, then blocked the hat making it overlap slightly. Not as much stretch as the others have had, but it looked really funky on the little cloche block and made me very excited. I’m going to line the edge with white ribbon then stitch it all together Hopefully it’ll keep in shape. And hopefully I’ll be able to complete it in just three short hours!!! Not sure how I’ll do it if I don’t have the block to work with though.

Next, the straw hat – I completed the rolling of the edge. That’s not looking as nice as I’d planned, but it was very fiddly. I’m thinking of using the leftover straw that I cut off to make the decorations – not sure how yet, still working on that bit. One of the other girls in the class has the same straw hood but in white and she gave me her leftover bits so I think that could look very funky. I’m thinking of rolling it around hat wire and having some form of abstract thingy going round the hat. Don’t worry if that doesn’t make sense to you – it doesn’t make sense to me yet!

So, more than 3 hours work there, so I bought home the black and blue hat, which I finished last night! I put a matching blue ribbon around it, gathered it in one spot and fastened with the spare button from the coat it’s designed to match. It looks really professional, although the decoration is a little too far back and obscured by the brim. Still, as always we’re the only ones who see fault in our work. I wore it to work today and I’ve had loads of really positive comments including “it looks like a real hat” from my client!

Since Monday I’ve also been shopping for acres and acres of Petersham ribbon and I made the headband for the embroidered cloche last night (I still have the holes in my fingers to prove it). I’m going to roll the remaining straw around wire in preparation for Monday and I’m going to see how much of the embroidery I can get done. It’s going to be a busy week.

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