Tutorial in pictures: changing a top hat's color

[labricoleuse]

For the current production at work, we purchased two grey felt top hats. Ostensibly, they were two different sizes, and two different colors. However, when they arrived, what the manufacturer called respectively "grey" and "dark grey" turned out to be essentially the same color of felt. No good! They had to look different for the different characters' costumes. It fell to me to change the color of one of the hats to a darker smokey grey.

Except, they were purchased top hats, factory blocked and constructed, so i couldn't dye the hatbody and reblock the hats (something i've done in the past with felt hats for which i owned the desired block shapes). We don't own the curled brim block nor the flared "bell" topper crown block for the desired shape. Our designer, Bill Black, wanted to retain the shape as-is, just change the color. So, i had to make this happen without reblocking, or deforming the shape of the hat.

But how? I have seen too many horrific, ruined felt hats that have fallen victim to icky spray-painting--thick coats of stinky enamel and the like--and decided to do a tutorial on a better-quality method for color-changing a blocked felt hat.



Here's the original color of the hat. Too light!


Step 1: Remove the hatband and interior grosgrain.
(Note how this factory hat has both staples and glue adhering its hatband! Yuck! [1])


Step 2: Separate the crown and brim.
(Factory hats are chain-stitched together so all you have to do is pull the string!)


Here's the disassembled hat, ready for the next step.

I then took Jacquard's airbrush color in Transparent Black, which is formulated for uniformity and ease of spray coverage, and put about 2oz into a Preval sprayer. A Preval is basically a two-part tool, a container and a pressurized cartridge with a spray nozzle. You can put anything thin enough to be sprayed into the container, and have an instant aerosol. They're about $3-$5 each and can be easily cleaned and reused, which is why i used a Preval rather than an airbrush--i don't need the fine control an airbrush provides on this, and the cleanup time of an airbrush is more extensive than i had time for. The Preval gave me good, even spray coverage fast, in just the time it took to pour a solution in a bottle and screw on the top.


Step 3: Spray tests on scraps of millinery felt.
(Note how the color sits on the surface, which will add depth on our grey base felt.)


Step 4: Spray each section of the hat in wide even passes to get uniform coverage.


Look at the nice depth of shade on the contours of the crown!


Step 5: Heat set the color.
(Here's something you don't see every day!)

I gently fitted the two pieces back together and placed them on a cookie sheet in our dyeshop oven, then heat-set the paint by "baking" the top hat at 275 degrees for ten minutes. (This oven is a dedicated "NO FOOD" oven--we use it for applications like this, baking polymer clay, etc., not cooking food.)

Then my assistant, Rae Cauthen, stitched the crown and brim back together, set the interior sweatband back in, and replaced the hatband.


Compare the two! These used to be the same color of top hat!

So, if you have to change the color of a felt hat and cannot dye and reblock, this is one way to do it. Tonight: tech begins!


[1] This makes sense in a factory context, where the majority of buyers will never get the hat reblocked or reconditioned or even change the hatband. In the theatre, where we want the freedom to easily change a hat, reblock, retrim, and so forth, staples and glue are bad news.

Comments

[valree.livejournal.com]

Well done! I had never heard of a Preval sprayer before.

[labricoleuse.livejournal.com]

Prevals are super-useful. You can usually get them at hardware stores, but if it's something you think you would use a lot of, shop around, because i can usually find somewhere selling them in dozen boxes for around $3 apiece, whereas at the hardware store they'll be pricier.

You can buy them all as a piece (glass bottle and lid, aerosol cartridge and pipette), or once you have the glass bottle part, you can buy the cartridge/pipette portion separately, too.

As a caveat, sometimes you get a bum one that just doesn't work from the get-go, and if you let the paint sit too long in the jar (like several weeks) the pipette or nozzle can clog.

But in general, they are awesome for purposes like this, or spraying tonal values into a costume, or even to "spray paint" effects with stencils or masking to create motifs or interesting other surface designs!