2nd Millinery Course - Week 12

I’ve been thinking more and more about my design and I think that, although I love the look of felt and love working with felt, it just doesn’t have the ‘occasion’ of sinamay. Plus I’m less confident working with sinamay and want to get more practice with it. So I decided that my challenge for last night was to block a two-piece in sinamay.

The problem is that I just don’t like the look of your classic sinamay hat, all mother of the bride and weddings and not what I’m aiming for. I had a wander round John Lewis and Milliner Warehouse for inspiration and decided to make a hat with a felt crown (so I can have another play at manipulation) and a sinamay brim, teaching me how to block that and attach it. To decorate, I’ll add a large flower motif in felt with sinamay swirls and wotnots to bring the two materials together. If it all works out well I’ll wear it to a wedding in January. To bring it in line with the dress, I’ll do decorative topstitching on all the decorative bits in the same colour thread as my dress.

I picked up a fur felt in chocolate brown and some matching sinamay and was ready to go. Brown’s not really my thing, but I wanted to try manipulating with a fur felt and it was chocolate, pale brown or black. I figured the chocolate will go best with my dress.

First I blocked the brim. I chose and off-centre brim block, not too big, and found out very quickly that blocking a brim in sinamay is a LOT easier than blocking a crown!!! I guess that’s not much of a surprise really as the brim is pretty flat and the crown’s all curved and the sinamay’s flat, but I didn’t expect it to be that much easier. Although I did break my elastic doing it!!! I stiffened it with PVA and popped it in the oven to dry.

I’d had an idea of a block with a fairly blocky top, kind of like this one from Morse Brown, but there was nothing like that in the cupboard so I decided to manipulate some folds into a dome shaped crown block. To fit the big floral thingy on the side I decided to just manipulate on one side. I have no idea what this is going to look like, but it’ll be exciting to find out.

I steamed the hood and blocked it on a tall dome shaped crown. Then I put the centre crease in, the two next to it and then started to work down one side. I didn’t like how the front looked so I brought the creases down to form ‘v’s at the front. It’s a lot easier to manipulate the fur than the wool felt and the finished article is a lot more dramatic. I was really pleased with how it came out.

I popped that in the oven and removed the sinamay brim. It’s the last week of term and I’ll miss the first two weeks of next term because I’ll be in India so I have rushed everything off the blocks a lot quicker than I normally would. I hope that won’t affect the finished product too much. I tacked the line on the block that shows the head fitting, but there’s not much else I can do with that until it’s wired. I have found out that I need to cut out the head fitting about an inch in, put in darts and fold up the excess, then stitch it to the crown like that. I’m very nervous about doing that on my own the first time, but I’m sure it’ll be ok.

So finally I removed the crown from the block and wobbled home overladen with precious very delicate things and getting far too much interest from random people on the tube. I hope to get this finished over the Christmas period – maybe I’ll devote next Monday night to it...

2nd Millinery Course - Week 10

Another week of tutorials and freedom to play about as much as we wanted to. When the teacher had been talking about making hats with crowns and brims, she’d said that it’s possible to block the crown and brim together rather than making a two-piece and sewing it together. Intrigued (as ever) I was determined to give it a go.

First off, I must admit that as the teacher was busy doing tutorials I went for the “bodger” approach and don’t know if what I did was right. We’ll have to see next week if it’s worked.

First I steamed my hood (beautiful dark red wool felt this week) and blocked the crown. I used an elastic and pinned the excess to the underside to get it out the way but to keep it stretched. I picked a brim block that fitted around the crown and propped it all in place. I steamed the brim heavily and then stretched it over the brim, pinning the front, back and sides. Using more steam I stretched the felt all around the brim to make sure it was well stretched and straight. The whole thing was excessively fiddly, but not as time-consuming as I’d expected. The brim had a string groove in so I put a figure of eight knot in a piece of elasticated cord (the only thing I could find that wouldn’t snap) to make a sturdy slip-knot and pulled it tight around the groove. I steamed and pulled until I could see that the cord was making a good indentation.

I also steamed the creases out of the hat I manipulated last week. When I took it off the block though, it is far far too tall! I think I’ll measure how tall I want the crown and cut it to make it a two-piece to bring the height down. I trimmed the brim (I’m really pleased with the manipulation I did on that last week) and decided that I’ll try a rolled edge on that when I wire it.

I was exhausted from a lack of sleep over the weekend so I decided I’d achieved enough and headed home early. I’ll try to get some more work in over the weekend ready for next week. I was disappointed to find out that the last class in December has been moved to early January – when I’ll be away. That means I’ll miss two classes instead of one :o(

2nd Millinery Course - Week 9

This week we started to have our individual tutorials. I printed off all my diary posts and added in some of the pictures of my research (not nearly enough it seems) along with the other bits I’ve done – spider diagrams, word association, analysis of individual pictures. Then I stuck it all in a folder, loaded up myself with bags of hats (I genuinely hadn’t realised how much I’d produced on the course so far) and proceeded to almost get it all to Fulham Broadway in one piece (a very nasty man tried to squeeze past me, squashed everything and then yelled at me)

I’d brought a hood with me to try some manipulation. First I blocked it on a rounded dome block, pulling it right down to the bottom. Then I released it, lifted it up a little and introduced a fold around the crown. I was going to do more, but I loved the simplicity of it so I pinned that in place and got to work on the brim.

I steamed the brim heavily then started to play with it to try all sorts of shapes. Eventually I settled on having it up on one side and down on the other, with an additional flick down at the top to keep it the right height. I steamed and stretched and compressed all over the place to make it look right and left it in the oven to dry. When it came out it looked like I hadn’t done all the steaming and stretching though – it was wrinkled up again!!!

While I was doing all that, I made up some bias binding in sinamay and started to bind the edge of my headpiece. I was surprised how easily the sinamay was worked around quite tight curves and how smart it looks as it's done.

I had my tutorial right at the end of the evening. The teacher seemed to like my folder, but expected far more photos and pictures and didn’t really look at the rest of the stuff I’d done. I guess I’m taking the wrong approach with my research, but the last time I did a project like this was at school so I know I’m a bit rusty. Oh well, I’ll try to go in a slightly different direction with it from now on.

PHOTOS TO FOLLOW - I'VE BROKEN MY COMPUTER AT HOME SO I'M GETTING A BIT BEHIND WITH THEM