1830's Bonnet

I started this hat on Tuesday.  I wanted to see how the hat pattern worked and fitted so I used materials on hand, which meant some medium blue cotton velveteen and some darker blue broadcloth for the lining and trim.  I had the buckram base wired, assembled and mulled by Tuesday evening.   I should have finished it Wednesday, but the first fabric I tried for the lining was cotton gauze, which gathered beautifully and stretched so much it looked awful.  The second try, was the cotton gauze without the ruching, which looked worse!  I did a quick sample up with the broadcloth and despite having to shorten the lining a bit due to lack of materials, I thought it looked much better, so kept it.

There are flowers for decoration, but I forgot to purchase some florist tape, to bind them together, so they will have to wait.

The pattern is the 1830's (version C)  from Lynn McMasters.     I used crown buckhram from Farthingales  .   I didn't have any millinery wire in the correct gauge, so I used some 16 g  wire  (aluminum?) from the hardware store.   It pretty much looks like the fencing wire we used on the farm, but that was probably galvanized steel.

The pattern pieces go together nicely.  The instructions bounce around through the 6 pages a bit, so once I realized that, I read them through a couple of times and marked which pages were the ones I needed.  The instructions said to use glue in a few places.  I was bound and determined not to use glue, but in the end, it made things a lot easier so I used the glue.   You can't tell on the hat. 

  The pattern fits a little small and the ties aren't really in a place to hold the hat on my head if it were a windy day, but those are both easy fixes.   All in all, I think the pattern is really well done and I would recommend her patterns to anyone who wanted to try their hand at hat making.   I am pleased that the hat went together fairly quickly and is going to be a useful, wearable sample.

Hopefully I will have something other than broadcloth for my lining next time, but I'll have to say that I'm not unhappy with the look of the finished product by any means.  It does need the floral spray though :(

Materials - Crown Buckram, 16g wire, bamboo quilt batting, bias tape, cotton velveteen, cotton broadcloth, thread, tacky glue, flowers for trim. 

I had to stop by the fabric store for the flowers today and a dress length of 1830's fabric came home with me as well.  Totally unplanned, but it jumped out at me on my way to the floral department.