Hat fit for a Bird

When I chose my medieval name, nearly 4 years ago, I chose a last name which translates loosely to “Hatmaker”. Sadly, I have not made nearly as many hats as I would like. But, I do think this hat makes up for it.

This hat is based on a combination of two hats from the early 1500s Germany.

Earlier this summer, I made a very large floppy hat. And I struggled to make it less floppy. I tried buckram, wire, and even poster board, and none of them quite managed to make them less floppy. That is until I tried basketry.

It has long been my belief that many odd medieval hats were made using basketry techniques. I came to this conclusion watching a presentation on Italian Donut hats called Balzos. Therefore, I purchased some round reed as part of a kit to make placemats and off I went.

My giant hat was 22″ wide, and thus took three days to basket weave. Thankfully this smaller more reasonable hat is smaller and only took an afternoon of watching the Marvelous Mrs. Meisel. I actually used up all of the reed left in my stash, and thus it was as big as it was going to get at 14″ wide.

Next, I used my gigantic protractor (this is what happens when you buy things on amazon without looking at measurements (or weight for that mater)), and made a pattern. My idea was to include slashed laurel leaves along the brim, and thus drafted the the pattern:

The top would be covered in feathers and have a round embroidered pelican on it like my reference photo above.

The embroider was done using wool on wool applique technique. I first cut out the wool shapes and couched them down onto the red wool.

Then I couched cold thread down to define the shapes. I used Benton and Johnson’s synthetic couching thread for this and I think it turned out beautifully.

The eyes and blood drops were embroidered using satin stitches in silk. Overall I am very happy with how this embroidery turned out. I toyed with the idea of adding beads like the extant image, but I decided ultimately it would not work with the materials and time I had available.

Next I took to completing the main base by slashing the laurel leaves.

The main body of the hat is made up of three layers of fabric. The lower brim has red and green, the red layer slashed to reveal green laurel leaves. The top layer is plane green (to be covered in silly feathers).

Because the reed placemat saucer doesn’t bend well and I couldn’t stuff it in like a pillow into a pillow case, I had to sew the layers together by hand. To do this, I carefully turned the edges under (which is more difficult than you want it to be when you are dealing with circles) and whipped them together around the reed placemat. I think the entirety of this had was made by hand, no machine sewing here!

The interior is lined with some scrap blue linen and the edge bound with some blue wool (as Landskenkts, the inspiration for this style did not do anything matchy matchy).

I also cut a circle of buckram to give the little pelican a little more stiffness and whipped a green circle and the pelican together as I did the main part of the hat.

Next came the feathers. I sewed them each down individually. This is easier than you would think it would be as once you sew a few stitches the feathers become very secure. And all your stitches and anchor threads are easily hidden by the feathers themselves.

And finally, I sewed the pelican on top of the feathers!

And now to talk about who I made this hat for…

When I became an apprentice I joined a big family of artisans. My direct laurel family are made up of embroiderers, most of which have been guild mistresses in the embroidery guild. But my bigger family includes many fabulous historians, researchers and dress makers. And one of those is Elizabeth Talbot.

Beth shares my love of silly late period clothes and we have been talking about making hats and German clothes for what feels like years. We even talked about hats in the last month. Little did she know what I had planned for her elevation to the Pelican.

Despite the rain, the clouds, the wind, and more rain, it was a joyous day and I enjoyed every moment of it. Nothing makes me happier than to make things for people to treasure. And hats. Hats just make me happy.

Look at me, finally a hat maker!

Support:

If you would like to support my art, you can donate using Ko-Fi by clicking this button: