It needs a (VPLL) Hat

VPLL H5685

The vintage wrap dress needs a hat. I don't have any 40's hat patterns that qualify as real vintage, and since I'm not a stickler for dates but I am a stickler for contest rules, a Vintage Pattern Lending Library one will be my choice. And since I have this at hand already, well....

I joined the VPLL's 1912 Titanic sew-along, but never got to making the blouse I signed up for. I did meet up with some amazing folks online, so I have a very squishy spot in my heart for them.

As for hats, they had an online sew along for H1440  , which has information about crinoline and where to get it in this century.

Of course, it wouldn't be a project if it didn't involve materials I don't already have on hand.

Being the improvising materials engineer at heart, I must have something that does the same thing. All I need to do is find out what its properties are.

Crinoline

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Crinoline was originally a stiff fabric with a weft of horse-hair and a warp of cotton or linen thread. The fabric first appeared around 1830, but by 1850, the word had come to mean a stiffened petticoat or rigid skirt-shaped structure of steel designed to support the skirts of a woman's dress into the required shape.

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Something not as heavy as buckram but more than netting. How about....plastic window screen material? Flexible, stiff, free and available in my basement workshop in the middle of the night.....

And it melts. Okaaaay...

Dug up lightweight buckram, that frankly I had forgotten I had ever owned. It's rolled up and stored with the Mylar and tyvek for heaven's sakes.

So let's get sewing!

It's three triangles for the crown, and two rectangle-like pieces for the band and the transition between the two. 

Piece 4, the transitional one, has a dart lengthwise

It forms that ridge coming around from the upper left.

The 'band' (#5)lines up with the seam in piece #4 which ends up as the back of the hat.

Thread marks the center front. The pin is at the dip over the right eye. #5 has the buckram/crinoline, and it does need that kind of stiffness.

I had to drag out pattern piece #5 to figure out the little circle marks and what they were supposed to mean. This is often where I fall down with old hat patterns: there are a million little circles on the patterns, and some obviously mean something and are indicated as such in the instructions. And some .... don't.

The side/back of the crown comes down to the bottom edge of the band in the drawings.

I dunno.

Sewed on ribbon to bottom edge, and then flipped it up to machine stitch the overlap of the crown to the band.

Ribbon interior band back inside.

After awhile, I just left the original pattern sheet on the floor to check and recheck the mystery dots, for overlapping and exterior ribbon placement.

The lining is indicated as a large circle gathered and sewn to the ribbon. I just measured the hat from side to side over the top and cut out a circle roughly that diameter. Which worked just great!

I dunno. I think the crown needs to be larger to overlap the band more. It needs crisper fabric (or underlining) to resemble the drawings. Still, a worthy activity.