Robe à la Française: Hat

 The final piece of the puzzle, the hat. I had always wanted to make a hat for this project but wasn't sure I would have enough time for it after I started working. Luckily, I did end up having time to make it! 

As I came to the end of making my Robe à la Française, I got online and ordered a straw hat base. Two-four weeks later, it arrived... and then it sat for another month or two while I started working on my next costume. 

As my second costume started coming to an end, I decided that it was finally time to make this hat. I followed the American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Beauty for the hat-making instructions.

I started by rolling out the small amount of fabric I had left from my Robe à la Française. I put the hat on it and cut the fabric around the brim of the hat. I cut out a circle at the crown of the hat, making sure to leave seam allowance as instructed. I cut another strip out of it as I knew I'd need some extra fabric for the crown of the hat. 

I then got my ribbon and hand sewed it to the brim of the hat, half on the exterior and half on the interior. It's quite hard work on your hands sewing through the straw so all my respect goes to milliners, past, present, and future, who do this on a regular basis. When sewing the half of the ribbon on the interior, I sewed it to the circular fashion fabric which I had basted to the brim prior. 

I then worked on the crown of the hat. This wasn't particularly hard, just rather fiddly. The hat became rather spiky with all the pins which made it awkward to hold, but I managed. Warning: your fingers will probably get poked a lot by pins while making this. 

I was rather nervous about making the ribbon decoration on the top of the hat as I didn't have much ribbon left. Luckily, I had just enough (I had about an inch of excess). I quite liked making this decoration. I really enjoyed watching the ribbon become these little bubble-like shapes. I think it's really cute. 

I didn't have any inch and a half ribbon left so I used an inch wide ribbon instead from the hat ties. The instructions call for an inch and a half wide ribbon for this step but I don't think it will really matter to use a thinner width. I don't really want to spend more money and wait another two to four weeks waiting for it to arrive. 

With the ties on, it is officially done... and so is this costume! Crazy right!

Anyway, I'll put out a review of how I feel about the whole costume soon, but for now, I really like this hat, more than I thought I would. I feel like I'm wearing the hat from the Christian Dior: New Look and I feel fabulous! We really need to bring nice hats back. Enough of these caps, give me a pillbox hat!

I'll talk to you soon. Have a swell day!

-Maysie