Black Elizabethan Woman's Hat
I was still in the mood to make accessories, so I put together this hat for a friend of mine. I've only ever done pleated tall hats before, so this was a bit of an adventure. The crown is constructed of two layers of coarse wool/poly blend sandwiched between two layers of stiff cotton mattress ticking. I originally only quilted the crown vertically, but I found that it made ugly ridges when it was curved into the final conical shape. I went back and ran more quilting stitches horizontally, about 3/8" apart, which made the surface much smoother. The top of the crown is one layer of cotton over one layer of wool, and the brim is three layers of cotton over one layer of wool, quilted in a spiral with 3/8" between rows. The outer shell of the hat is a lightweight, soft black cotton. Each section (crown, top, brim) was made as a single piece, covered with the black cotton, then whipstitched together. I added a piece of light gauge copper wire (for lack of any better wire on hand) to the brim about 1/4" in from the edge on the underside. The lining is burgundy linen reclaimed from some long-forgotten half-finished project. I sewed the crown and top of the lining together, tacked it in along the seam inside the crown of the hat (by far the most tedious part of the whole project), and whipped it down around the underside of the brim. Then I added the lining of the brim separately, stitching it first along the inside edge, then along the outside. The band is a bit of gold brocade reclaimed from another ancient garment I made about 10 years ago. It is cut to match the curve where the crown meets the brim.
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