Tag: hats

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!

 

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…

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!

The hat blocks are here!

Felt hats

Aren’t they beautiful? My very own multi block cloche set from Guy Morse-Brown. You may have already seen pictures of them on Facebook – I’ve been saving up for these all year, and was very excited about their arrival! All the sections are interchangeable, which means that eventually I can buy more crowns and brims to make different styles of hat. But I think cloches make an excellent everyday sort of hat, and I want to make hats that people actually wear, not stick in a cupboard and only bring out for weddings. So, cloche hats it is!

Felt hats

The blocks are covered in cling film, to prevent dye transfer from the felt, and to prevent the stiffener that’s impregnated into the fabric from sticking to the wood. The floppy shapes on the table are called capelines – which my spell checker keeps insisting is two words, grrr! They’re made from wool, and I bought them at Broadlands about four years ago. About time I put them to good use!

Felt hats

Some people use steam, but I just used hot water to soften the felt enough to pull it down over the block. The red band is a blocking spring, which holds the felt in place at the crown so that you can keep pulling and stretching it over the brim. It’s hard work – this kind of felt is very stiff.

Felt hats

This is the brim, held in place by fifty special blocking pins. Once the felt is completely dry, I can cut away the excess, trim the brim, add an inside band, and then decorate it. I think this one’s going to be mine!

Felt hats

And here’s the second block, which has more of a sweeping shape to the brim. The back of the hat is on the right. You wear this hat slightly pushed towards the back of your head, so you can see out from under the brim. Speaking of the brim…  I might need to work on this one a bit more. I think this is where steam will come in handy, as I had real trouble blocking the brim to fit the concave shape of the block. I don’t think the string was tight enough in the groove to make a really neat edge to the brim, but I won’t find out until I’ve taken the hat off the block. The great thing about working with felt like this is that it doesn’t matter if I’ve mucked it up at the stage – I can simply soak the capeline in hot water, or steam the brim, and start again. Brilliant!

Wool felt colours

And because I am nothing if not enthusiastic, I’ve made a colour chart of the range of felts I can order from to make more hats! (Oh, number 20, Regal, is out of stock at the moment, so you can’t have that one.)

What I’d like to do is offer a discount to the first six people who pre-order a hat from me. This gives six people a hat at a fantastic bargain price (yet to be worked out, but likely around £40 + shipping), and gives me the funds up front to buy things like a big roll of brim wire and a bottle of felt stiffener that I can’t buy in single-hat quantities. I realise that nobody’s going to buy a hat based on two pictures of work very much in progress, but I figure that if you know this is happening, you can start to think about colours and trims for when the time comes!

Christmas Fair & New Year Plans

Christmas Fair

This is Paul making himself comfortable behind the Eternal Magpie stall at the Berkshire Autistic Society Christmas Fair last Saturday. We were in a brand new school designed especially for kids of all ages who are on the autistic spectrum, which was a really lovely space. The floor was both squashy and heated, so he was actually much more comfortable than you might expect!

From a stall point of view the day was fairly quiet, but it was the first event of its kind in this venue, so I expect next year’s will be a lot busier. We were lucky enough to have some local friends pop in and do some Christmas shopping with us, and we chatted to some other lovely stallholders. We also met lots of families, some of whom I knew from working at the Museum, and some from my previous job with the Family Resource Centre. Two little boys had a great time sorting through all my button badges (they loved the maps), and another was extremely honest with us about the scented candles. Thankfully he was complimentary, his Mum was a bit worried he was going to say something rude! Everyone at BAS had clearly put a lot of effort into the event, and it definitely deserves to be a lot better attended in future.

However, as it turned out, we came home with just the right amount of money to tip my savings over into being enough to buy the set of hat blocks I’ve been coveting all year! So, an email has been sent to Guy Morse-Brown about a set of interchangeable crown and brim blocks for making felt cloche hats. There’s going to be a steep learning curve involved, but there will be (hopefully lovely) hats coming this way in the New Year!

tealight stack

There will be a number of other changes too. I’ve just discovered that four out of five of the Airship Fresheners fragrances have been discontinued, so I’ll be choosing some new candle oils in the New Year. Lure of the Kraken will continue to be available, and Hot Tea & Crumpets (currently sold out) I can hopefully buy another batch of before it disappears – but Sweet English Rose, The Arabian Nights and Cherry Bakewell will be gone completely once these last few candles have been snapped up. Still, it’s a good excuse to look for some interesting new fragrances, and there are a few I have my eye on already. Sloe Gin, anyone?

I’ve also decided to discontinue the large candles in the glass jars, and only make tea light candles in the future. The jars make the candles heavy and fragile, which makes them difficult to ship. I think sticking to tea lights and offering some kind of “pick-and-mix” option with the different fragrances is going to be a better way forward. I’ve also had requests for wax tarts rather than candles, so I’m going to be investigating the possibilities for those too.

I have kept back one large candle in each fragrance though, so that the winner of the Facebook Giveaway (almost there!) can have their pick.

Anyway, the next couple of weeks will be free from Emporium work as I take a break to spend time with Paul and our families, and also to do a little bit of sewing for myself and my niece. It’s Christmas Dress time again, and I’ve got some really sweet fabric waiting for me. I hope she likes it!

Lots more hats

Lots of hats

Today I took a day’s holiday from work, to go to a symposium in Oxford about the care and maintenance of natural history collections in museums.

Unfortunately, when I got up this morning, it became apparent that the central heating had stopped working, so I had to stay at home and wait for someone to come and fix it. Thank goodness for the British Gas home care insurance – we’ve only lived here for a month, and it’s the third time we’ve called them already!

While I was waiting, I popped the fan heater on in my sewing room, and wrapped myself up with a scarf and fingerless gloves. The end result of a day’s work has turned out to be the little mountain of polar fleece you can see above. Eight more hats waiting for the brims and the bands to be sewn by hand, and another twelve hats cut out and ready for the machine.

Now I just need a bit of inspiration for embellishing them, as they’re rather plain at the moment. I read over on Betz White’s blog that you can use paper cutting tools on felt, so I thought I might give the paddle punches (assuming I can find them!) a try with fleece and see what happens.

Four Fleece Hats

Fleecy hat

This is one of four fleecy hats that I managed to make today. I decided that I’d start my first round of sewing in the new house by using up the fabric that’s currently taking up the most room, which is a veritable mountain of polar fleece. I bought it to make hats to take to Frome in May, but ran out of time to actually make them.

Sadly, today’s four hats have not made any sort of dent in the pile of fleece, but I’ve been invited to take the Emporium to the Berkshire Autistic Society‘s Christmas Fair on December 14th, so hopefully I’ll have time to make a few more hats between now and then!

Hopefully I’ll also have time to get some better lighting sorted out in my sewing room. Its only window is six feet away from next door’s two-storey house, so it gets very little light at the best of times. In electric light it’s just awful – the hat above is actually a lovely light purple, not dark grey!

Fleecy hats

The hats are quite plain, with an oval crown and a turned back brim. Suitable for men and women, I’ll be making more of these in two sizes. I have two black and two purple so far, both 22″ which is the smaller size. I also have more colours – two greens, some burgundy, and a sandy colour, as well as black with white skulls, and pink with black skulls. Enough for about twenty-four more hats, I think! That should keep me busy for a bit.

While I’m making the hats, I’m also thinking about what kind of embellishment might suit them. I’m contemplating a brooch of some kind, perhaps something needle felted onto a matching (or contrasting) fleece background. I’m also contemplating how best to make the polystyrene heads look a little bit smarter before the fair. A coat of paint, maybe, or some sewing pattern paper. I have plans for more hats in the future, not just a mountain of fleece ones, so I want the head forms to look their best!

Experimental hat

Felted Hat

I’ve spent all week thinking “I must get around to doing a bit of felting”, so today I got out some fluff and some soap, and got on with it. This is three layers of merino tops – dark brown on the bottom, a light tan in the middle, and a sort of a foxy-coloured orangey layer on the top.

Felted Hat

I’m always surprised by how quickly the felt actually comes together when you make the layers nice and thin. Perhaps because my initial experience with felt was making it with kids, who tend to whack a ton of fluff down any old way, no matter how carefully you explain “thin layers” to them! There again, I’m always surprised at how long the fulling part takes. As soon as my felt’s holding together I want to call it finished, and I’m always a bit disgruntled when it isn’t.

Felted Hat

Once the felt was made, and fulled a bit, I decided to get out my hat block from Wingham Wool Work, and try to make a hat. If I’d known at the beginning that I was going to make a hat, I’d have made the piece of felt round instead of square! I did a lot of the stretching and shrinking by hand and with my trusty wooden soap dish, all the while thinking “I wish I had a palm washboard” alternated with “I wish I’d just bought a felt hood“. Eventually I resorted to the ironing board, and discovered that steaming the living daylights out of the felt with the iron worked really well!

(Although I also discovered that I hadn’t actually washed all the soap out of the felt, so my Shed now smells of hot, soapy sheep. Could be worse, I suppose.)

Felted Hat

And here’s what I’ve got to show for an afternoon’s work – a funny, felty, foxy sort of a hat.

I thought about cutting away the excess, or trying to neaten it up into some kind of tidy brim, but I really like the raw “unfinished” edges of the felt, and the way you can see all three layers of colour this way. I’m hoping that once the hat is dry, the pleats and folds will stay in place, but I suspect that I’ll actually have to stitch them. Which is fine, because I can take the opportunity to embellish the hat a little bit more as I’m working on it.

The last thing I’ll need to do is add an elasticated band inside the hat. That way it should mould to my head nicely (the polystyrene form’s a little bit too big for me), and it should be less likely to pull out of shape as I wear it.

Now I just need to convince myself that I don’t need a lovely wooden cloche block. The polystyrene one’s fine. Really.