Jill, sorry for the delay, but you know how wild these mannequin heads are. Here I was, spending the weekend with visiting family while Mimi took a plane and off she went to the Derby. Just arrived today, she has given me a picture for your Virtual Kentucky Derby day posting!

She is wearing a Fred Bare hat that I bought in Paris in the late eighties (one could call it vintage, but then you would also have to call ME vintage… so let’s leave it at that).

Thank you Jill for your wonderful ideas, I love your virtual hat days!

A birthday present from Peter that has arrived in advance. Mimi is my new friend and fellow hat lover (she is not happy unless she has a hat on her head!).

I had dreamed of having a DecoEyes mannequin head but I believe the company is no longer in business because although their website is still out there, they don’t reply to emails. I had my eyes set on Matilda but unfortunately it was not to be, at least not for now.

So I started looking for an alternative and I found my dear Mimi (officially known as Mimi3). A US seller on Ebay that ships overseas had it, and with the exchange rate as it is, it was a good deal. She was well packed for the journey and arrived in about 10 days, which is pretty fast if you ask me.

What do you think of Mimi? I like her big blue eyes and flapper hairstyle, she also has a beautiful long neck, and looks great with a hat on.

She’s made of fiberglass, so she’s very light, and her make up seems to have been spraypainted, although some of the details might have been hand applied.

I had to use scotch tape to keep in place a couple of the hats I have taken pictures of.

Because her headsize is 22″, all of my hats fit her (loosely, which is not a big problem).

Here is Mimi wearing some of my hats:

You might ask yourself why I’m calling this hat a Felt Pattern Hat when it’s not made out of felt but of faux astrakhan fur. The reason is that the pattern comes from Ruby Carnahan’s book How to Make Hats (the 1952 edition with the red cover -hence not the same book from which the Hat for Ship and Shore pattern comes from, that’s the one with the yellow cover).

One is supposed to make this hat out of a felt hood cut open on one side and ironed flat, the pattern pieces being cut from that open felt.

I was ready to sacrifice this felt hood (well that’s a cone not a hood…), when common sense or perhaps a lack of adventurous spirit made me give up the idea, and switch to the faux fur.

The hat pattern is great, flat on the back where it stays close to the head and wonderfully three dimensional on the front. It kind of looks like a crab shell! You can find the pattern and explanations (which are scarce) on Vintage Sewing’s website, which by the way is a wonderful resource for many other books.

Here are a couple of pictures of the hat in the making:

I didn’t know how to finish the hat until these beautiful shoes crossed my path. My mom decided to get them for me as an advanced birthday present. They are Muxart shoes, a well known cult brand from Barcelona. They are wonderfully retro, comfortable (although the ball of my feet hurts terribly when I stand up for a while but that is lack of practice) and they are just the right shoe to wear with a hat.

When I got my new shoes I knew it would be fun to put a flat white grosgrain bow on the hat to match the shoes, and I actually had to do that in record time because that very afternoon I got the shoes I went with my friend Nina to a a presentation about fashion tendencies (regarding color, materials, textile and accessories) for winter 2009-2010. The presentation was done by fashion guru Angelo Uslenghi and was very interesting. It was my first time in one of these things and I want to say thanks to Helena who got us in (she belonged to the organizing team).

So I bought the grosgrain and rushed to make and sew the bow in place. I will have to re-do it because it didn’t come out 100% right, and perhaps I will completely change the way it’s laid out on the hat. If I do I will take pictures and show you!

For now these are some close up pictures of the hat as it is, but the flash has burned the detail from the bow, sorry about that!:

Anyone wants to try and make one of these?

You’ve got to love the fact that more and more old books that are now in the public domain are being digitized to make them available to a wider audience. Today a new array of books came to my attention thanks to Shay and her blog Little Grey Bungalow.  As you can see on her blog, she has found out a veritable treasure of scanned books (36 in all, related to fashion and millinery) available online from the Department of Human Ecology of the University of Wisconsin.

I cannot beguin to guess which one of the books will tickle your fancy, but I can tell you I went directly for Emily Burbank’s Woman as decoration, from 1920. And I can tell you I was not disappointed, the title gives it away, and the following jewels come from this book:

From the Foreword: “Contemporary woman’s costume is considered, not as fashion, but as decorative line and colour, a distinct contribution to the interior decoration of her own home or other setting”… “A woman owes it to herself, her family and the public in general, to be as decorative in any setting, as her knowledge of the art of dressing admits”.

From the chapter The laws underlying all costuming of woman: “The ideal pose for any hat is a french secret”.

From the chapter Establish habits of carriage which create good line: “Woman to be decorative, should train the carriage of her body from childhood, by wearing appropriate clothing for various daily rôles”.

From the chapter Woman decorative in her motor car: “It is not easy to be decorative in your automobile now that the manufacturers are going in for gay colour schemes both in upholstery and outside painting”.

From the chapter Woman as decoration when skating: “To be decorative when skating, two things are necessary: first, know how to skate…” (don’ say!!)

The conclusion “Remember, that while an inartistic room, confused as to line and colour-scheme can absolutely destroy the effect of a perfect gown, an inartistic though costly gown can likewise be a blot on a perfect room.”

And now on to the remaining 35 books… My next one is Straw Hats, their history and manufacture, the chapter Hand and Machine sewing looks mighty interesting, very little has been written on that subject!

My apologies to Jane for my long delay in making this hat, which should have been finished a long time ago (we were going to tackle this project together but I fell behind). She did a super job, you can see her posts on the subject if you follow this link. The hat pattern comes from this Japanese book.

After finishing the hat I must say I get the feeling this is not really a trilby (the pictures on the Japanese book are misleading), because the brim is too wide and the angle too steep.  It must be said though that the pattern is really good and the final hat is beautiful and has a nice structure.

I can reconfirm that the patterns in the book include the seam allowance (I thought they did not at first, sorry again Jane!). In this particular hat we’re talking 0.7 centimeters on the lining and 0.6 centimeters on the rest, except for the headsize which is 1 centimeter. Just knowing that it’s included makes it easier to follow the instructions, even though they are in Japanese.

The fabrics I have used are a black velvet I had left over from this hat and a black and white herringbone wool fabric recycled from an old pair of trousers. I used a heavy weight iron-on interfacing that I thought would give the hat the body it needed,  but I believe that if I do another one of these I will try with a lighter weight interfacing.

To make my life easier, I traced the pattern onto the interfacing, cut it and then ironed onto the outer fabric, although to tell you the truth I started with the wrong foot, adding allowance (which turned out to be included) and worst of all sewing the top and side parts the wrong way around (doh!). But the extra seam ended up being a blessing because it gave me enough space to cut trim the excess and start again.

I made size L, which produces a hat with a 59 centimeter circumference. I believe the end result was a little bit smaller, but seems to be fixable by putting a stretcher and letting it stay there overnight (I did it and it worked, but shrunk back during the day… this time I’ve sprayed it with a little bit of water which I hope will help it to stay in place).

This is a hat that has many possibilities, on the picture I’m wearing it higher on one side, but can also be work square, or down… you name it (to see all pictures, also of making process, click here):

Now that the Hat Parade is over, I can move to other pastures, and my next project (really, I promise) will be to finish the trilby that I had already started, messed up, and have to start again. This is from the book that I reviewed some time ago.

This is a project that I was going to do together with Jane but because of personal circumstances I’ve had to postpone. I’m lucky that I can now profit from Jane’s experience and techniques in making this trilby (that she has already finished). You can see all the pictures she took if you follow this link. One of the debates about the patterns on this book was whether seam allowances were included or not. I did some research and concluded that Japanese pattern books never include allowances. Well tough luck, this one seems to be the exception, and Jane found out the hard way what has later been confirmed by two nice Japanese bloggers that left me the following two messages when I posted an SOS on their blogs:

First Miho told me:

Hi, Cristina,
“スタイリッシュクロッシュ” patterns are including seam allowance.
1.0cm : Head circumference (topper side of brim, and lower side of crown)
0.6cm : All except head circumference
In this book, it is written that seam allowance of the lining must be changed to 0.7 from 0.6 using same pattern.
Because the lining is smaller than face, it is beautifully finished.
I hope that my advice is helpful for you.
Happy sewing!
miho

 Then A-na confirmed the same:

Hello,Cristina!
Welcome to my blog.

In this bookスタイリッシュクロッシュ,the pattern includes seam allowance.
A seam allowance of head circumference is 1.0cm,and the others 0.6cm.
When you make the lining,seam allowance must be changed 0.7cm.
Although using same pattern, the lining must be smaller then the face.

Do you understand me?
I’m sorry I’m a poor explanation.
I wish you make lovely hats!

 I want to thank them for their effort in explaining to me this whole seam allowance business in English.

 By the way, I will be a few days in London soon… any suggestions on millinery related visits?

I’ve corrected the link to the book review!

The day arrived and there we were with our hats on.

The weather smiled on us, it was a warm and sunny day, and around 80 hat lovers gathered together for our anual stroll with hats.

Nina and I had been working these last weeks in making our own hats, and I also worked on a hat for my mom (you can see her wearing it on the left).

Mom’s hat is made with a gorgeous iridescent blue vintage cellophane straw. Cllick here to see a picture of the back of the hat. I’m happy she could join us, and I thank her for making the effort. She has been feeling under the weather these last months and I know it was a great effort for her.

This year we made pins to distribute among the participants (you can see one on my mom’s lapel, by the way she sponsored those!), and we also made leaflets that we could give away to curious by-standers.

In addition, and generously sponsored by Peter, we have a new domain www.ambbarret.com (meaning “with a hat” in Catalan) where we will post pictures and posters, and also an email address: passejada@ambbarret.com where people can send us an email in order to receive information of future parades or events.

Nina’s hat was really spectacular. Made of a cream colored cellophane straw, it’s a gorgeous, labor intensive top hat that swirls around on the sides. I really loved the result! Here is a picture of Nina’s hat… what do you think? 

Then there’s my hat, also made with vintage cellophane straw, but a much wider one. I will post some pictures of the making process of the hat in the near future, but I will tell you right now that working with cellophane straw is really difficult because the thing tends to rip very easily, running the needle through it is a no-no, so the idea is to sew through the gaps of the braid (not easy!).

There are more pictures… check the rest of the post!

(more…)

Well… I didn’t do anything special this Sunday, but I wish I had been with Jill and all hat lovers on a real Easter Parade. No such luck, but here’s a picture of me with a ribbon embroidered veiled hat for the Virtual Easter Parade. 

 For those curious, I used veil from my vintage stash, and I embroidered the flowers with Mokuba ribbon on top of the veil, to help it stay in place.

Remember the day I helped Nina with a hat she was making for a theater play? It was for Oscar Wilde’s play “Lady Windermere’s Fan”, that opened on April 19th 2007 at the Catalan National Theater. I wrote about it here.

I did promise to show you a picture of the finished hat (designed and finished by Nina), and here it is.

By the way, Nina Pawlowsky won two awards for her work on this play. One is the “Adria Gual” award for costume design, given by the ADE (Scene Directors Association) during a ceremony in Madrid. The other one is the Butaca award for best wardrobe.

I say she’s the best and she really deserved those awards, and more!

Here are other shots of this hat:

El próximo 30 de marzo 2008 (domingo) te esperamos en Barcelona para dar un paseo con sombrero. Quedamos en Rambla Cataluña con Diagonal a las 12 del medio día. Es la excusa que necesitabas para comprarte (o hacerte) un sombrero nuevo ¡Nos vemos!

Next March 30th (sunday) we look forward to seeing you to take a stroll with your hat on. We will meet at noon on Rambla Cataluña with Diagonal. It’s the excuse you need to get (or make) a new hat ¡See you!