Tutorial: 1940s felt hat reproduction, part two
Continued from yesterday's post, today we'll look at the steps left to finish the reproduction of a stylish 1920s felt hat from our vintage stock at PlayMakers Repertory Company. A reader over on this blog's Facebook page made the excellent point that you could do this project with one of those floppy felt hats you see popping up these days at stores like Target for $10 or $15, which is a great suggestion for those without access to millinery suppliers, or time to mail-order them. Affordable, too, and it is frankly probably what the original artist did when making the one i've copied!
Recall from yesterday that we'd gotten the brim arc stitched into the crown and then disguised the stitching of that seam by tacking the narrow band over top of it. Here you see the next step, trimming the width of the brim down. Hat bodies are often irregular on the edge, so this not only brings the brim arc down to the desired width but also cleans that edge neatly. Mine is cut down to 4" here.
Above is a detail shot illustrating how to take a tuck in each side of the brim arc. I've pinned mine in place with quilt pins and at this stage, i adjusted those pleats in the mirror a few times til i got a good shape that I liked. Then i tacked each side down securely.
Top right: Pin the fan flange to the crown, into the gap between the pleated brim bits at the center back of the hat. You can see here some of my stitches tacking down that one edge of the hat. This is another case where trim is going to cover your stitches so security and sturdiness is key, rather than fine invisible handwork.
Top right: Cut a single strip into each side of that fan flange. You'll tack this over your stitches at the two ends of the brim arc, where the pleats are secured.
Bottom left: That strip pinned into place. In this case, i did take care to make my stitches securing it neat and invisib,le.
Bottom right: Cut the rest of the fan flange into a fringe as shown. My pieces are a fat 1/4" wide.
For the next step, you'll flip each strip over at the tip and tack it to the crown in a splayed fan arc. The tack should go a little bit toward center back, where this quilt pin is located, so that each strip can spring back a bit to create dimension, as you see with the strips close to the brimg there on the right.
On the original, this flange was not symmetrically arranged. I decided to do that same but you could choose to evenly split them left to right. You'll see what i mean in the next image.
Four views of the finished hat! See how there are only seven strips flipping to the left in that top right image? There are eleven flipping to the right on mine. That fan's shape is a matter of preference.
Hope you've enjoyed this tutorial, and if you make one, please share photos!