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Tuesday, September 18, 2012

A hat? And it's not at the last minute?

Buttons are on the skirt.  Final strips are on the overskirt and it just needs a waistband and closures.  Boning for the corset and bodice is in the mail.  Jacket pattern is (hopefully) done, though it may have to be shortened due to lack of fabric.  And my greatest accomplishment, I made a hat.  Pattern.

Well, I made part of a hat pattern, based on the TV hat pattern.  I was going to have to change the pattern anyway because the front of the hat was too narrow for my big head, apparently, even with the hat tilted forward.  So I thought, in my ambitiousness, why don’t I alter it some more?  So I took the TV hat pattern as a basis for the crown, altered it so the bottom arched upwards on the sides, and used an oval brim instead of the brim for the original pattern.  I wanted something a little different than the hat I already made but simple enough that I could do it with not that much skill.  Then I saw this fashion plate (the hat in the middle) and thought it would be doable.



So this is my interpretation of that, but with a short crown, since the larger one (the regular crown) just looked silly on me.  If I think that crown looks weird, I don’t know what I’m going to think of myself wearing a skyscraper of a hat for a late bustle dress!




One side is different than the other because I was playing around with the curvature of the crown, so it’s a bit lopsided in the front.  Man, making a hat pattern, even from an existing one, is a pain.  I’m going to have to do it again eventually, especially for my zodiac dresses, but hopefully I’ll have a better library of hat patterns to work with by then.

I may at least cut out the brim and start sewing on the wire while I’m at the beauty shop tomorrow.  Which reminds me that I need to start playing around with my hair switches to figure out what I’m going to do with them.
 
Oh, and here’s a quick picture of my skirt and overkirt that I took before above stuff was finished and I did a trial run of the bustling in the back.  I just look at that picture and it feels heavy...
 
 

That's all for now!  Hopefully I'll have an almost completed bodice and corset to show you by next week!

5 comments:

  1. I read somewhere, probably at TV, that you shouldn't judge your hat out of context. An 1880s tall hat with jeans and a t-shirt is gonna be crazy weird. With an 1880s dress, maybe not so much. That said, I'm almost 6'2'' in my Victorian boots; add a tall hat and I feel a bit freakish.

    Also, that skirt rocks!

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    1. It's so weird, I'll see pictures of women wearing these hats with late bustle outfits, and they look fine, but just looking at it by itself looks so weird. See, now you're enabling me to not make my hat until the last minute so I don't second guess my hat choices because they're out of context.

      Now I'm having thoughts about women hiding stuff underneath their hat. To go with their huge bustles that I'm sure is just a big compartment, like a trunk of a car. Then is the hat the glove compartment then? ^_^

      Thanks! After I took that picture, I realized just how far I've come with this dress...and I'm excited to wear it!

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  2. No, I'm enabling you to make a hat first, then make the dress and then another second-guess hat at the last minute. You might not like the first hat but at least your head will be decorated if the second hat falls through. And besides, it's good practice. ^.^

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    1. *sighs* But hats take so LONG to DO. *Whine whine whine...*

      I'll tell you what. In your honor, I will try to work on the hat first for my next project. Which will either be a straw hat (I'm thinking Denise Nadine's Beth) or a tall hat, depending on which project I start. I know what I want to do for those, at least partially. I need to build up a stash of general hats so I don't have to make one for every single outfit. That would be nice...

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  3. And very period correct. But then I'd have no distractions and have to work on the tedious undergarments of doom.

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