mlsdesigns | A VERY silly Regency hat ...

...and how to make it, if you feel daft enough ;)

So, once I got the kirtles to the take to Scotland stage I decided I deserved a play! Playing at this year so far has meant Regency :) I have a pink silk spencer and a white striped sprigged muslin day dress on the go (also for Scotland sewing!) and, of course, I've been millinering!!

My first was a hat, a very silly hat! I haven't quite decided if I'm going to feel brave enough to wear it in public! Anyway, as I was making it I thought, "I may as well try to do a tutorial as I go along, just in case!" so, if you feel brave enough,

It's made from super heavy duty sew-in-interfacing, wire, wool wadding, cotton flannel, green cotton velvet, pale green silk taffeta, golden yellow dotted figured silk and green and yellow striped ribbon. I based it on 2 hats from Jane Austen adaptations, this one worn by Mrs Elton in the ITV Emma:

And this one worn by Elizabeth Elliot in the 1995 Persuasion:

So, if you want to make yourselves a silly Regency hat like mine, here's what you do :)

Use your brim pattern that the lovely

jennylafleur gave you, looking something like this:

(Make sure to add seam allowance to the inside edge, cut at 1/2" intervals.) Then the crown, this is made of a side and tip. The side will end up like this:

This is my pattern:

And this is how I made it, please excuse the dreadful diagrams etc!

I taped the side together, taped on the brim, and put the open ended hat on, (so my head would shape the correct oval) then we measured the approximate dimensions of the oval, marked this on a cross, and used an offcut from cutting down the side, taped into a circle, to draw the shape for the oval, much easier than eyebaling the curve!

I worked out I actually only needed to draw one quarter, then trace it for the other three quarters, so it would be symmetrical in both directions. Mark the CB and CF points, and add seam allowance.

The brim is sewn together at the CB and wire zig-zagged to the outside edge, the side is sewn into a circle and wire zig-zagged to each edge, then the tip is sewn on. I mulled the underside of the brim with cotton flannel, to soften the lines for the silk taffeta,(which has a much larger seam allowance on the inside edge to hide all the messy bits later) but the velvet is thick enough not to show the lines:

To make a less bulky edge to the brim, the velvet is cut large enough to wrap around to the underside to form the binding. To make a less bulky head opening, the velvet seam allowance of the brim is turned under and glued in place.

The same is done to the crown, instead of wrapping the velvet around to the inside where it would make the head opening too small, it's turned under and glued in place:

The brim can now be sewn to the crown, and the extra large silk seam allowance on the inside glued down to cover all the mess.

The silk for the poufy tip is cut twice as wide as the circumference of the crown, and the length is the radius of the tip, plus the depth you want to show on the side, plus seam allowance. Stitch the CB seam, and run gathering stitches along both edges.

The silk is gathered up to fit and stitched to the crown. To pad the top, one layer of wool wadding is the same size as the tip:

One layer is half and inch bigger all round:

And the final layer on the tip is the size of the tip plus the depth to the stitching holding on the silk:

The last layer is a strip wrapped around the side holding the tip layers in place:

The silk cover is pulled up at the CB and CF and sides and pinned to the tip:

Then the gathering threads are pulled up and it's distributed evenly, ready to be sewn down. The stitches will go right through to the inside of the hat, pulled nice and tight:

The last step is an oval of cardboard, half the size of the original tip, mulled in cotton flannel and covered in silk. It's slip stitched to the crown, covering the edges.

Try to make the stitches go through all the layers right to the base, this way the flat oval will look loke it's holding the gathered cover in place, not floating on top: