Day 2

  Sorry, I have no pictures for you.  I took my hat home to finish sewing it together so I can be ready for straw hats!  I was laughed at and called keen, but, hey, I'm trying to get as much out of this class as possible.

  Class was spent pretty much entirely in sewing (with some small amount of light and careful ironing).  Once we pried our brims off their blocks and neatly trimmed them, we started by sewing the head band to the inside of the brim.  All of the stitches are meant to be invisible, which means really really slow going.  Slow going for most of the class, but really, really slow going for me.  Not only slow, but pretty sloppy too.  The teacher pointed out that I couldn't be expected to just be good at it right away, to which I replied that I most certainly could!  But apparently it takes practice, and a lot of the class is enrolled in the fashion school.

  Sewing (invisibly) the wire into the brim didn't go much faster.  I finally managed to catch up a little when it came to the stab stitch, (invisibly) sewing a fold over the wire in the brim.  Again, it wasn't especially clean, but apparently I need to be patient.  I wanted to show G my work, so I brought it home and did manage to get some work done.

Today, my hands are sore.

Hat Classes!

My top hat brim, all blocked and ready to go into the hat oven!

   Today was the first day of hat classes, and while the lead up to class was somewhat awkward, class was great!  We pretty much jumped right in.  We all got the same felt (nice stuff too, chocolate brown fur felt) and were told to chose a hat that could be blocked in two parts (the crown and the brim).  I decided to do a short little top hat, and after some digging, found the perfect blocks for my project.

My top hat crown (it only goes to that line close to the middle of the block)

  We began by plastic wrapping the blocks to protect them and make sure the felt doesn't stick to them.  Then we proceeded to manhandle our felt hoods.  We drowned them, squeezed them and stretched them until they were ready to pull over the crown blocks.  Hands already getting a little tired, we then had to pull them taught around the blocks and pound little pins into them.  Lots and lots of little pins.  With our hands.  After that, you steam them and brush out the felt so that it looks nice.

The block room

  By the end of class we'd blocked our crowns and brims and left them in the hat oven (which is kept at something around 175, so pretty cool).  If our crowns were dry, we were able to work them off of the blocks.  Tomorrow we will be doing a lot of hand sewing, I imagine to put the hats together, and to finish them nicely.  I'm so excited to see my hat all put together!  My hands hurt!

The entrance

To London!

Well, I've shut down the Shoppe this morning and I won't be back until I've learned some fancy new hat skills in England!  Hooray!

Weapons of Self Defense: The Hat Pin

“When attacked from behind, she grasps a hatpin. Turning quickly, she is able to strike a fatal blow in the face.”

While I was browsing Aka Tombo's Blog last week, I found a great link to an article detailing the forgotten art of hat pin self defense from one of my favorite fashion eras, the Edwardian period.

From the Bartitsu Society:

The popular trend towards enormous, flamboyant hats reached its zenith during the Edwardian era. Circa 1901, fashionable ladies’ headwear featured elaborate assemblies of taffeta, silk bows, coloured ostrich feathers, flowers and even artificial fruit.

The mainstay of the Edwardian hat was the artfully concealed hatpin, and as the hats themselves grew ever larger, so too did the pins. Some antique examples are thirteen inches long and resemble nothing so much as unbated, miniature fencing foils.

A wealth of evidence from the period demonstrates that hatpins were popularly regarded as secret weapons, and indeed as “every woman’s weapon” against the depredations of hooligans and ill-mannered brutes. Laws against hatpins of “excessive length”, or the wearing of hatpins without protective stoppers, were proposed in Hamburg, Berlin and New York among other cities. At least ostensibly, these laws were intended not so much to ban the use of hatpins in self-defence as to mitigate the incidence of accidental hatpin related injuries inflicted upon blameless fellow passengers in crowded tram-cars.

The article goes on to share some more amusing history, literary references and some technical instruction.  You can find the full article here

Fascinator Friday with Aka Tombo

Pheigi Sugahara Macdonald of Aka Tombo (Red Dragonfly) places the highest priority on making eco-friendly and people-friendly products that, in my humble opinion, happen to be completely gorgeous at the same time.  She carefully chooses unbleached, natural silks from socially responsible companies, recycled kimono silk from nearby markets, and certified Harris tweed directly from her homeland of Scotland.  To top it off, she goes beyond all this admirable responsibility to ensure that none of her products are "bland or beige" and instead have a sweet, funky style.

You can browse her shop here

And read her entertaining blog here

Enjoy!