Behind the scenes again!

[labricoleuse]

Last night was photo call, and the show opens Saturday here at work. We're generally busy so i've not got much time for a long post on it yet (i'll make one when i have the photo CD in-hand). I did go around and take some "behind the scenes" photographs of some of the period-pattern half-form projects and some hats in-progress to share. According to the cliche, this is at least as good as me writing several thousand words... :)




Half-form projects in Period Pattern


Another view of same


Here's a hat i began making this summer--feathers and fabric are vintage, hatbody is new.


Finished hat i illustrated blocking in a previous post


Back view of hat with snood-like veil


Spiral braid hat with potential decor pinned on


Rear view of same hat


Detail of straw feather manufacture technique


Front of theatre--check out my parasols on the banners!

Comments

[labricoleuse.livejournal.com]

That hat was originally an untrimmed blocked blank hat that i bought at a NY Garment District supplier of assembly milliners (folks who buy blanks and trim them up for retailing them, but don't block the blanks themselves).

It was initially a much more extreme scale, the crown was about 2" taller and a brim that was about 1.5" wider. (Think "church hat" in the most ostentatious sense of the phrase!) I took the crown off the brim, unspiraled the straw off the base of it and off the perimeter of the brim, til it was the current shape. I reattached the crown and brim, put in a grosgrain, and voila, now the new shape you see.

It was a demonstration of how you can salvage parts of a spiral-construction hat as-needed. When my students finish their projects next week, i'll post pictures of their results; a couple of them did stitched spiral hats from scavenged straw where they retained part of a previous hat shape's crown.

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

So the original crown was fairly consistent in size?
This is great--I'd have never thought to do that. *plots trip to thrift store*

[labricoleuse.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was basically this hat to begin with:

Click on "COUTURE" then check out style #1030 (http://www.rosebudny.com/index2.html) (they have their images protected or i'd direct-link to it), and that's the base hat before i reduced the crown height and brim width. Or, if you imagine it without all the blingy frippery, at least.

I've got another one in a different style that i'm planning to do a step-by-step with later, when things aren't so busy. It's a cool trick--the base hats can be had for fairly inexpensively, and can turn into such totally different things!

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

Wow--kudos to you for seeing what was possible.