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Hats vs. Bonnets

8/2/2021

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DEFINITION OF BONNET

When talking about womenswear, a bonnet is a woman's head-dress which has a brim of some kind and which ties under the chin.  The tying under the chin may be the original distinctive element, since its etymology shows it "akin to Old Saxon gibund bundle, Old English bindan to bind".  It is stiffer and more structured than a coif, which often ties on but is a close-fitting and entirely soft garment.  It's different from a hat, which can have a brim, and may tie under the chin, but has an entirely different attitude.

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Beret blah...

5/5/2020

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Picture
After finishing this skirt, I had a bit of leftover fabric, and thought I'd made a beret for myself.  I found a tutorial on YouTube, and whipped the thing up in an evening. 

In the end, I didn't like it and stuck it straight in the Goodwill pile.  Nevertheless, here's the making-of documentation, so I can do better next time! 

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Berets for my Niece!

8/2/2018

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When I told my six year old niece I would make her a hat, and asked what color she wanted, she answered: "Teal and sparkly pink!"  Well, I found sparkly teal and pink, so I decided--close enough--and set out to make the hat with them. 

THE PATTERN

I picked up a Maw-Bell pattern from Fabric Depot a while back, during their warehouse sale.  It has a plaid skirt and hat in it, but I was just interested in the adorable hat.  As it turns out, it's a super simple pattern! 
Picture
So simple that I can just explain to you right now, which is a good thing, since Maw-Bell might not be in business anymore.  (At any rate, their website is gone and their blog hasn't been updated since 2014.)

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The Chocolate Girl's Cap (March 2016)

1/29/2018

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Picture
The Chocolate Girl, by Jean-Étienne Liotard [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Jean-Étienne Liotard was a Swiss pastel artist in the 1700's, and is one of my favorite artists.  I love the unique poses and facial expressions of his subjects.  Color-wise, I love how he uses plain gray or brown backgrounds to make his colors pop.  I love his blues.  There's a clean, refreshing look to his pictures, and a unprepossessing uniqueness to the people he portrays.  Unlike oil paintings of the time, which were formal and expressed rank and privilege, his pastels are informal, intimate. 

One of his more famous pastels is The Chocolate Girl, a young woman carrying a tray of hot chocolate.  She wears what looks like a cap or coif, but made from what looks like pink silk instead of the more common white linen.  It's sweet and pretty, and served as the inspiration for a cap I made about two years ago.  I already had a nightcap, but I wanted something prettier to wear around the house, to cover my hair so I wouldn't pick at it. 

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Making a Flower from... a Flower.

1/1/2018

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Happy New Year to everyone using the Gregorian calendar! 

Have you ever looked at a fake flower--you know the type: plastic stem and fabric leaves and petals--and thought "too bad that's a big bulky fake flower; I wish it were softer and more sew-able so I could stick it on my dress"?  If that's the sort of thing you think, you're reading the right blog! 
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If not... well... how does your brain work, then?  I'm really interested, because it seems like such a normal thought to me, and I'd be curious to know how someone thinks who doesn't have that thought. 

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Glengarry Cap, take 2!

9/11/2017

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Passing the Scottish Country Shop one day, I went in to see if I could examine a Glengarry cap in person.  Alas, I didn't have much time before they closed, but based on what I saw there, I have made some alterations to my pattern.  For instance, it's clear from the tartan caps like this that the base of the pattern is not a straight line, but a curve.  If you turned the cap so that grain and cross-grain are a plus sign (look at the plaid), the back of the hat is hanging down.  Another thing which is clear when I contrast my finished hat with the picture at the top of the post is that I should not have sewn around the curve at the bottom of the hat... the authentic hat is not sewn around the curve, so the curved edges flair open around the head when worn, and fold neatly when not worn.   Here's a little sketch of the revised shapes:
Picture

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Glengarry Cap, or How Not to Make a Hat

9/4/2017

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Picture
​Sometime, I fall into a hole in the internet.  No, not a time-sucking vacuum of a hole, like when I go to TVtropes.com and emerge hours later wondering where my day went; I mean a content gap of a hole, where I can't find the information I'm looking for, and I don't know if I'm using the wrong search terms of if--incredible as it may seem--the information is not there!  Such was the case when I went looking for a pattern to sew a Glengarry cap.  Plenty of info about Glengarry caps was to be found, but when I added the search term "pattern", I only got crochet patterns (not useful for sewing) and a bewildering amount of Iroquois beadwork.  Now, I like Iroquois beadwork as much as the next sewing-obsessed bead-loving person, but it does not help me turn my upholstery scraps into a cute Glengarry cap!  
[Picture by ludovic (Ludo29880) on Flickr.  Creative Commons license here.]

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A Red Tam!

2/20/2017

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Picture
During construction, the segments at the front of the hat got bisected, which looks quite neat from above.
As my sister has expressed the wish to wear more hats, and I am happy to oblige her, I sat down recently with some curtain remnants.  I decided to make a tam, though she fretted that it would be too "fussy".  The pattern was easy: 
  1. Decide how many panels or segment you want (I decided on six)
  2. Measure head circumference at the place you want the hat to sit (22.5").
  3. Divide head circumference by number of panels (22.5" / 6) and that gives you the size of the bottom of each panel (3.75")
  4. Draw a shape like the dome of the Taj Mahal, with the base being the above calculated length.  
  5. Make a long rectangle (about 24") for the band.

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Russian Ice Hat! Part III

2/6/2017

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(Part I for planning and Part II for construction.)


Hat people are like cat people: we are sure that anyone would join our ranks if they only found "the right one"!  I am a hat person, and this may just be the right hat for my sister! 

(That skeptical look on her face is at the mere suggestion of being a cat person!)

So one wintry day, my sister wore the hat outside for a photoshoot.  Here's the finished chapeau!
Picture

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Russian Ice Hat! Part II

1/30/2017

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Continued from Part I

I now have three pattern pieces for the hat I'm making my sister.  I decide to cut the body of the hat (side rectangle and top oval) from the ice-blue fabric, and quilt it for shape, warmth, and beauty.  The brim will be silver, lined with more blue.  The inside of the hat will be lined with whatever is to hand... in this case a bit of white curtain lining and more of the blue fabric. 
Picture
Here you see three layers: batting on top, flannel in middle, silk on bottom. (The terry cloth under that is my makeshift ironing board.) I cut the silk with seam allowances but the other layers without, to reduce bulk in my seams.
Picture
Here you can see me using the curving edge of a plate to mark lines for quilting. It's not mathematically precise, but it looks great!

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    Karen Roy

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