labricoleuse | Straw hat for Raisin in the Sun

I've been so busy with the beginning of the semester and two repertory shows in production in the shop, that i have not posted anything in a while. I've got a bit of time today though to share this fun straw hat project I've been working on for Raisin in the Sun at Playmakers Repertory.

In the play, a little boy named Travis gives his mother a hat to garden in, and the hat is supposed to be inappropriate in a sweetly awkward way, something a child would choose and think was fantastic, but not a hat an adult would buy for digging in the dirt. Our costume designer, Jan Chambers, found this antique hat that she loved:

...but as you can see from the photo, the straw is not in good shape. It is dry and crumbling, and in fact you can see along the scalloped brim edge where pieces of it have already broken away. Because of the brittle, cracking straw, this hat would never make it through the run of a play as a costume item.

I spoke with Jan about what aesthetic elements of the hat appealed her her the most, and she responded to the visible nature of the weave, and the scalloped detail along the brim edge. While there wasn't time to weave a hatbody exactly like this one from straw braid, we looked at what was possible using millinery straw that i had in stock.

Above at right you can see a skein of narrow straw braid, of the type used for spiral construction hats. I made a sample of a scalloped trim with it that Jan liked, so here you can see the mid-process of creating enough to span the circumference of the new hat's brim.

I had a straw cartwheel hatbody woven from wide straw so the weave was similarly visible as in our original antique hat. Jan like the contrast between the scalloped trim and the body, though if she had wanted them to match, i'd planned to dye the hatbody with a fiber reactive cold-process dye. Above you can see me stitching it along the edge of the underbrim after the crown has been shaped and the grosgrain installed.

Another strip of the braid was applied to the overbrim, 1/4" away from the edge, to create the sweet stripe/scallop look you see above. And then a load of silk flowers and dotted tulle and a shimmery sash were added, and voila! Travis has gotten Mama a gardening hat!

I really love these kinds of collaborative millinery production/design processes, where we have an idea of what a hat needs to be, but the process by which that hat comes about is one of exploration and discovery and serendipity.