hat part 2

I think the hat is getting even larger and more ridiculous. Since the last post, I have sewn up all the seams properly, then added a pink linen lining, like so:
 
It isn't perfect, but I think it'll do. I figured linen would feel nice against my head, and the pink is the result of an unfortunate dye job. It was supposed to be a nice rust color for a jerkin for Aaron. He nixed this color. Shame.

I went ahead and used some quilt batting to pad the structure a little bit. I was hoping to tone down the faceting on the crown of the hat. This would be where the "getting even larger and more ridiculous" comes in, but I think it's necessary. No pictures of that, sorry. I added heavy-gauge wire to the brim in case I want to tinker with the shape of the curve after I'm done. I've also begun to cover the hat with some very nice black cotton velvet. Here's my attempt at arranging pleats at the top.
 
You can see here the little pancake stack of batting that I've used to make the top (hopefully) domed. And may I just say that this is a ridiculous shape to try to cover. I've been tinkering with pleats at top and bottom. This hat is pretty much stuck in the "almost done but I'm not quite happy with it" phase. Hopefully I can sort it out! 

my hat is bigger than your hat

Meet Lady Kytson:
 
Or at any rate, meet her hat. It’s quite a hat. Indeed, if you compare her to various other portraits, her face is much lower in the painting than average to accommodate that gloriously silly hat. After Julie started messing around with hat-making (and complaining about the largeness and silliness of the hats), I decided it was time to work on the hat I’ve been coveting. Also, I think I’ll have to start cultivating that “I smell something foul, perhaps it’s a peasant” facial expression. To use on my husband.

Step 1: Analyze the hat. The height of Lady Kytson’s hat is roughly 150% that of her face, tapers up to a bulbous sort of shape, and has an exceedingly arched brim. I’m not sure what the fabric might be, as it’s a black-on-black portrait, but I’m going on the assumption that the very nice cotton velvet that supposed to be arriving in my mailbox tomorrow would be a good choice. She’s got some sort of enormous bendy feather on the side, which I’ll have to look for. She’s also got a bunch of brooches? buttons? jewels? who knows? stuck all around the base of the crown. That too, I’ll have to consider. I may do a simple band, since my character isn’t supposed to be quite as hoity-toity as all that.

Step 2: Make a paper mockup on a small scale to see how the curves will come together. Decide that it’s the proper size for the dog. Chase the dog around with a paper hat and a camera. Always an important step in any sewing endeavor, right?

 
Step 3: Lay out a pattern. Definitely don’t bother to research the pattern, just start tinkering. Surely high school geometry is good for something. I am using plastic canvas because that’s readily available locally, whereas buckram is not. Also, while I do know how to make tacky Kleenex box covers, I do not know how to work with buckram. No doubt as I sweat under this enormous plastic hat, I’ll regret this decision, but there’s nothing new about that. Here’s what I ended up with for a pattern after a couple of tries:

 
Step 4: Stick a few stitches on each side to make sure that this hat is going to go together approximately right. And by approximately right, I mean that it should make the husband choke with laughter. Apparently, it was approximately right. I made the husband compare the portrait and me a number of times to see if the proportions were in the ballpark. After all his squinting and measuring with his fingers and all, he was unable to conclude that the hat was too big. If anything, he said, it might be a smidge small. Hard to believe I know. So then, here is the aptly-named “mock up.” You may commence mocking. On a side note, I can still walk through doorways, so that’s good.


 

Step 5: Take it apart and start sewing it together properly. No pictures of that yet, but it’s going along swimmingly. Plastic canvas is really fun to sew on. Oh, also, additional mocking at this point would be fair. As if that weren’t self-evident. 

better

 

The dress engineer has a very particular code of ethics on certain things. Specifically, he's very reluctant to offer false praise on my handiwork. So when he didn't have much to say about my first foray into wool embroidery, I figured I needed to do better. A bit of reading up in a basic embroidery book yielded the idea of using my previous work as the underlayer for a bit of padded satin stitch. It seems to have worked out ok. For one thing, the color density came improved a lot. Once I made the flowers heavier, I thought the chain stitch stems looked a bit spindly, so I tried backstitching through them. Those might still get changed if I can learn how to do something more interesting. Still, an improvement, no? Or in the dress engineer's unsolicited opinion, "hey, that looks sort of pretty now." High praise indeed. 

tinkering with wool

 
So I've done a little bit of tinkering with wool embroidery. I'll be the first to say that I know not a darn thing about embroidery beyond backstitch and cross-stitch, but apparently I'm catching on to chain-stitching too. This is wool floss on black linen, started at the VA renaissance faire. It was supposed to turn into a needle case, but seems to be much too big, so it'll be the ubiquitous sweetbag instead. I'm trying to randomly teach myself some stitching with it. Like satin stitch, and um....more chain stitch maybe. I'm not sure what I'm doing, but I think this'll look nicer than a plain black pouch. Either that or it'll look like something I did in kindergarten. Either way is ok really.

 
The design I'd scribbled out is this, which is what happened when I squinted my eyes at the inside of a blackworked dress? collar? partlet? worn by Mary Tudor. I changed the 8 petals to 5 because....I just felt like it. Also, the Tudor rose and all that.