Category: hats

Latest Hat Update…

Blue Hat

I haven’t shown you a picture of a hat for a while, so I need to rectify that straight away!

This gorgeous blue one is already sold. I showed a picture of it on Facebook, and a friend popped up and yelled “MINE!!” almost immediately! I still need to work out the best way of adding a custom order listing to Etsy, so that people can choose the colours and flowers that they like.

Lettice's Sophisticated Hat

This one’s also sold – a lovely dark grey (anthracite) hat with guipure lace trim and a velvet button. The brief for this one was “sophisticated”, so I hope I’ve managed to achieve that. This was also the first hat which necessitated making a slightly different size from my blocks, so I hope it fits!

Ivory Hat

This one is for sale, it’s listed over on Etsy. The lace trim is one that came to me in a bundle with all of the vintage haberdashery, and it’s embellished with some little flower-shaped beads. I’m on the lookout for more lace motifs like this (not necessarily in ivory), as I’m really pleased with the way it’s turned out.

Fuchsia Hat

And one more, again listed on Etsy. Fuchsia pink this time, which is turning out to be my best selling colour so far! This one has a wider lace trim, gathered underneath another velvet button.

I had a conversation at the market on Sunday which worried me a little bit – it seems that people might not entirely understand that I’m actually making these hats, rather than just buying them in from somewhere and then trimming them. I suppose I should take that as a compliment, as it means they don’t look “hand made”. But then it also means that customers might not understand the inherent value in the time I’ve taken to choose the colours, choose the block styles, work the felt, and then add every single stitch by hand rather than machine. Believe me, doing all of the sewing by hand takes hours for even the simplest of these styles.

That’s not a complaint, of course – it was a conscious decision I took right at the beginning, to do everything by hand. It just means I need to make sure that people are aware of all that work, and that the hats are reaching the eyes of people who actually value it. How I achieve that is another matter, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

Full Moon, Full Brain

Full Moon. Allegedly.

I happened to be awake at around two o’clock this morning, and was amazed by the brightness of the full moon. It was absolutely beautiful, and if we still lived right next door to the lake I’d have been very tempted to go for a little walk. I’m not sure why I thought this photo would express the magnificence of last night’s lunar spectacle, but it’s the best one I managed to take! Sad, really.

(It was two o’clock in the morning, don’t forget!)

As always, I’m at least two ideas ahead of myself, and I was lying awake thinking of all the things I’d like to be doing if I had either time or the money – preferably both!

Thing Number One is a cosmetics project that’s been lurking around the back of my brain for a very long time. I’m thinking that some kind of little Kickstarter-type of enterprise might work for this one though, as the thing that’s currently preventing me from doing it is having enough cash up front for certification assessments and a bulk-buy of ingredients. The idea is a (probably quarterly) Cosmetics Club, where you could pay a subscription to receive a lovely box of goodies four times a year. I was originally considering monthly, but several people have pointed out that a month isn’t very long to use up a box full of bath and body products, and also it doesn’t give me much time to experiment with recipes and make sure I’m sending out the loveliest things!

The whole thing would be branded as part of Mr & Mrs Magpie’s Inexplicable Emporium, complete with faux-Victorian packaging and a story to go with each item. I’m looking forward to that part just as much as I am to developing the products themselves! The main question really is where to start. There are three certification packages available:

  1. Lip Balms
  2. Body Balms, Butters & Oils
  3. Bath Bombs, Melts, Milks & Salts

The second two are probably the most versatile in terms of what I’d be able to make following a single assessment cost, so it’s really a matter of which to choose first – and then encouraging enough people to support the project in advance, so I can actually go ahead and pay for it.

Thing Number Two is MORE HATS!
I’ve been having some quality issues with the felt hoods I’ve been using to make the hats. I don’t think it’s a problem with my current supplier, I think it’s just a problem with machine-made felt in general. I have a number of experiments I want to try out in terms of making my own felt:

  • Will the merino tops I’m using to make all these flowers be too soft to make a good hat?
  • Will it look too “home made”, as opposed to fabulously and uniquely hand-made?
  • Can I get an entire cloche hat out of one carded batt of more hardwearing fibres?
  • Do more hardwearing fibres only come in “sheep colours”?
  • If so, can I dye enough wool myself, using natural dyes? Or will they be too muted for my liking?

You can see I have a lot to think about! This one’s a bit easier than the cosmetics project in that the materials are a lot cheaper, and I have enough fibres already to answer at least two of these questions without having to buy anything new. I just need to find the time to do the experiments, and risk ending up with a little pile of horrible hats if it doesn’t work out!

Thing Number Three (did I even mention three things?) is also hat-related, and it’s MORE HAT BLOCKS! Today I received an email from Guy Morse-Brown with the preview details for their newest hat blocks.

Oh. My. Goodness.

I’d been pondering how to make some different cloche shapes by re-shaping the hats as they came off my existing blocks… but now I find I can buy not only two new sets of brim blocks which are already exactly the shapes I wanted (and which will fit together with the blocks I have already), but there’s also a single-piece cloche block which is simply STUNNING. The down side, of course, is that I’m going to need to find the best part of a thousand pounds in order to buy ALL THE THINGS, which obviously I don’t have. (Or less, obviously, if I don’t try and buy it all at once.) But I’ve been mentally designing hats for exactly these blocks for a while now, so it’s very exciting to discover that they’re actually available!

The plan for right now though, is to concentrate on getting as many hats as possible ready for my Indoor Market on Sunday. Anybody local to Reading, it would be lovely to see you at the Corn Stores! I’m bringing along a nice big mirror so you can try on all the hats, and I’ll be taking orders too.

I will be closing the Etsy store for the day, just to make sure I don’t accidentally sell anything twice, so don’t panic if you try to visit and find me gone! I’ll be back on Monday, once I’ve updated the listings for anything that’s sold.

More flower than hat…

Nicola's ORANGE hat!

So, this is what happens when you order a hat in BRIGHT ORANGE, and then give me free reign to decorate it however I like. I blame Nicola, for agreeing that a massive “alien flower” would be a good thing to wander around wearing on her head.

Nicola's ORANGE hat!

I have to say that I have absolutely LOVED making this. The opportunity to use a nice bright base colour, and the freedom to make something that I thought Nicola would like, has been really enjoyable. As has the process of making the felt itself. I’m learning something new every time I work with wool in this way, and I’m so excited about the possibilities. It’s good for me too – it keeps away my perfectionist streak, as there’s no such thing as “perfect felt”, and it changes all the time as you’re working with it.

Nicola's ORANGE hat!

The centre of the flower is circled with bright orange bullion knots, to draw the colour back into the hat. The process of stitching through handmade felt is incredibly satisfying – almost therapeutic, somehow.

I had to take a bit of a break from felting today, as my shoulders and neck were complaining about all the rubbing and rolling, but I can’t wait to get back to it. My next day not-at-work is Tuesday, and that’s most definitely going to be another felting day!

At long last – another new hat!

Pale grey cloche hat with blue beaded felt flower

It wasn’t until I came to upload this hat to the Etsy shop that I realised it’s a whole month since I added the previous one. How on earth did that happen?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the hats (too much thinking and not enough doing, clearly!), and I think in April (when I formally register Eternal Magpie as a business again) I’m going to move these hats out of the Inexplicable Emporium and over to an Eternal Magpie branded Etsy store. I think that will allow me to have a bit more creativity without having to shoehorn them into the faux-Victorian theme… and if I make anything properly crazy or very obviously Steampunk-inspired, then it can go into the Emporium if that’s where it fits best.

Felted leaves and tendrils

I’ve been having a bit of a play with felt again, with a view to the hats having a lot more handmade embellishments, rather than only ribbons and buttons. I think that lends them a certain uniqueness – anyone can go to a shop and choose a pretty ribbon and a striking button, but only I can make these exact flowers. Sure, there are a million and one felted flower tutorials out there, so I can’t claim any uniqueness in that. But these flowers will have come out of my hands and my imagination, and that will hopefully make these hats stand out a little from the many other cloches out there. Typing “felt cloche hat” into Etsy currently returns 1,869 results, so I need to make mind stand out somehow! They’re currently on pages 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 (out of 47) of that search, so not bad, but anything I can do to make them that little bit more interesting will definitely help.

I also want to make a few smaller things, such as hair clips, to offset the fact that yes, these hats are going to be expensive when the prices go up in April, and yes, they’re going to be outside of many people’s budgets. I’m hoping that people might start by buying a hair clip with some pretty felted flowers on it, and like it so much that they save up to buy a hat. Well, a woman can dream!

 

Another fuchsia pink hat!

Helen's Custom Cloche

This is the latest hat (almost) off the blocks – another fuchsia pink cloche with black guipure lace trim. I was asked to amend the shape of the back, so that it wouldn’t catch on the back of Helen’s coat collar.

Helen's Custom Cloche

As you can see, the cutaway flattened out a little bit once I’d added the brim wire, but I think it’s still a nice shape. Hopefully it will be shaped enough to accommodate Helen’s coat!

Helen's Custom Cloche

All I need now is a really nice button to finish it off, and to cover the join in the lace. (Where the pins are, although I was careful to make the join as discreet as possible.)

I’m looking forward to having a little more time on my hands when next month comes around, all this hand sewing is very slow. I lost the best part of a week to being ill, and I’m on a course with work this week, which is more sewing time gone, and I’ve got a backlog of hats waiting to be trimmed!

Don’t forget that all of the felt hats in the Etsy store will be going up in price at the end of the month, when the introductory offer comes to an end! I’ll try and get a few more finished before the deadline, so you’ve got plenty to choose from.

New hat, new options for a mannequin

Hand blocked wool felt baby pink cloche hat featuring a floral design with hand embroidery, felt flowers and vintage buttons

Here is today’s felt hat offering – now in the Etsy shop. I’m really pleased with how the flowers came out, although I learnt an important lesson about doing all the work in the right order. (Note to self: Yes, putting the flowers on first allowed you to check their placement. But it made for incredibly fiddly stitching of the stems!)

I had been vaguely planning to work on felt hats during my full days off work, and then do other kinds of sewing during my half days. Given how sore my fingers are from doing all of this hand sewing through machine-made felt, I think I might revise that plan. Ouch.

Excitingly, my previous hat (the bright pink one with the black guipure lace) sold out almost immediately, and was swiftly followed by an order for another one the same! So I’ve ordered some new felt hoods from Parkin Fabrics, and I’ll make a start on some more hats once they arrive. Perhaps without embroidery this time though.

Interestingly, after my earlier post contemplating the purchase of a new mannequin, I received a very helpful email from Equipashop.com, directing my attention to the existence of the lovely lady above. She’s perfect!

Okay, so she’s still out of my budget right now, but she’s much more affordable than the one I was looking at before, and she’ll be able to display hats, cowls, gloves and jackets. Brilliant! I’m now following Equipashop.com on Facebook, I’ve signed up to their mailing list, and I’ll be making a purchase as soon as funds allow. (And she’s SPARKLY. I mean really, how can I resist?)

Looking around the rest of the site (which turns out to be FULL of bargains!) I was also pleased to see that they offer a plus size mannequin, although she’s not in stock right now. Granted, at roughly a UK size 14/16 she’s at the smaller end of plus size, but that’s still several sizes bigger than most garment display options. Conveniently her measurements are almost exactly the same as mine (though she’s quite a bit taller), so she’d actually be perfect as a dressmaker’s dummy for my own sewing.

Hmmm.

Maybe it’s time to get on with having that pattern de-stash sale that I keep thinking about, to raise money for the newly instated Mannequin Fund…

More Making

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At long last, a new cloche hat for the shop! I’ve been waiting for the lovely guipure lace to arrive, and also for a full day off work when I didn’t feel too ill to to anything. (Back to the dentist today for a face full of iodine. Yuck.) This one’s now up in the Etsy shop, at a bargain price because it’s not quite as perfect as I’d like. It was the first hat that I blocked, and my trimming of the edges wasn’t perfectly straight, which has resulted in a slightly uneven hem on the inside of the brim. It’s not at all noticeable when you’re wearing the hat, so this is a great opportunity to grab it for a silly price. The custom listing is also available, if you fancy a different colour.

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This cowl was a bit of an experiment, and it’s one that I’m quite pleased with! You can wear it with the buttons at the front or the back, to keep any stray draughts away from either your neck or your throat. (This one’s in the Etsy shop too.) I’m pleased with the lovely yellow vintage buttons, but rather than snap fasteners I think I might work hand-stitched buttonholes in the future.

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Unfortunately, it’s proved rather difficult to take photos of a large draped neckerchief on a mannequin that doesn’t have any shoulders! I don’t think the pictures do it justice, so I’m going to need to find another way. I’d love a torso mannequin, like this slightly abstract one from Morplan, but that’s definitely out of my budget until I’ve sold a lot more hats! (Any hats. Selling any hats would be nice.)

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and get an early night. It’s half term this week, which means I’ve got an extremely busy day ahead of me at work tomorrow!

Two more hats…

Anthracite grey wool felt hat with black velvet ribbon band and button trim

Today’s been a pleasantly busy one – a good old rummage through my haberdashery boxes this morning, followed by two more completed hats!

I particularly like the understated style of this smart dark grey one. I don’t think it would look out of place on a film noir femme fatale, topping off a great big coat with a fluffy collar, and a slinky dress worn with beaded shoes.

Equally, I think it would look fabulous with jeans and a jumper – effortless weekend style in that “I look awesome in my jeans and fancy hat” kind of way.

Purple felt cloche hat with pink felt band and lime green button

This one’s a different sort of a creature – very eye-catching, and in all my favourite colours at once! It’s designed to be worn tall – with space between the crown of the hat and the top of your head. But if you want to, you can pull it right down and hide inside it, with the back of the brim flipped up for a different look.

I have three blocked hats still left to work on – a pale grey, pale pink, and the same bright fuchsia as the band of the hat above. I have some lovely black guipure lace that looks very striking against the fuchsia, I just need to buy another piece that’s actually long enough to go all the way around the hat! I’m not sure yet about the pale grey and pale pink. I have half a mind to embroider flowers all the way around the pink one and top them off with lovely buttons, but I don’t want it to come out “whimsical” in a bad way!

Anyhow, the two hats above are now in the Etsy shop, along with made-to-order versions of each style. I’m off to let my poor old fingers recover from all of this hand sewing. I might make a few more hoods on my next day off, to give the machine a bit more of the hard work!

First brand new hat off the blocks!

Black & red cloche

Yes, I know I showed you my pink cloche the other day, but as I didn’t make it completely from scratch it definitely doesn’t count as my first brand new hat. This one, on the other hand, does. It’s finished, it’s for sale on Etsy, and I’m really pleased with it! I hope somebody else will like it enough to want to offer it a new home.

I’ve decided that all of the blocked felt hats I make between now and the end of March will be listed for half price. What that price turns out to be will depend mostly on the cost of the materials used in the trimmings, and the amount of time it takes to make them. I suspect this will vary quite a bit! Hopefully this will bring in enough money from hat sales (she says, optimistically!) to buy a few more wool hoods, than I can then make a few more hats with. I will also offer custom orders, for a limited time only, to see how they go.

Cupcake hood

Something else that’s also now for sale on Etsy is this cute little hood! Again, I’m intending for this to be the first of many. I have different styles in mind (this is the smallest – they get bigger and sillier from here!), lots of different fabrics, and different fastenings too. I recently treated myself to a set of Clover Asian Knot templates so that I can start to make my own frogging. I think that will look lovely on these hoods, and it might make some pretty hat trimmings too.

Now I just need to stop being quite so nervous about having finished my first blocked hat! I need to step away from the Facebook likes and the Etsy stats, and concentrate on making the next one. And the one after that.

If you’re interested in keeping up with progress on the hats, the best place to do it is via the Eternal Magpie Facebook Page. I post quite a lot of working photos there, little snippets of what I’ve been up to, and I can update it on the go more easily than writing a whole blog post. Mind you, snapping photos on my phone and uploading them in all their graininess is making me rather covetous of a new phone – or a clever camera that connects to the internet. Probably just as well I’ve spent all my money on hats blocks!

Slow progress

Whiteley hat - after

I was hoping to show you three finished hats today – but apparently that was a vast under-estimation of how long it would take me to do all the hand sewing! Admittely there were interruptions (doing the laundry, finding a mouse in the kitchen, rearranging all the furniture in the sewing room, stroking the rabbit…), but hand sewing is still very slow – especially around the inside of a hat.

The one above is finished, and it’s actually one I’ve had for ages. It’s a Whiteley hat that I fell in love with, but didn’t wear very often.

Whiteley hat - before

It used to look like this. I took off all the trimmings, soaked the felt, and re-blocked it into the cloche shape above. Fundamentally the same hat, but now in a shape that I’m much more likely to wear!

Red & black cloche - in progress

This is as far as I’ve got with the black cloche which was one of the first onto the new blocks. I’ve sewn the band inside, which took ages, as I was trying to discover which would be the best needle to use. (I’m still not sure.) I’ve sewn brim wire all the way around the edge of the brim with a stitch that’s like a blanket stitch, but with a french knot thrown in for extra security. I’ve also sewn the black grosgrain edging to the inside of the brim, and you can see that it’s just pinned into place on the outside. I’m not entirely sure that this was the best type of grosgrain to use, as it’s 100% polyester, and I’m not convinced I’m going to be able to steam the fullness out of it so that it sits smoothly in place.

The red grosgrain, which is just pinned in place to give you an idea, is a vintage one that came to me in a donated pile of ribbons, and it looks to be a much better quality. The button I just happened to have in my stash, along with a matching purple one that’s going to look lovely on the purple hat that’s blocking on my table now.

I think my next hat day is going to be Monday (unless I manage to sneak in a few stitches at the weekend), so this is definitely going to be a very slow process!