When one is in quarantine and slightly (very?) bored, one must find a project to entertain oneself.
Enter the new 2020 adaptation of Emma. Loved it! Gorgeous costuming, fabulous sets, candy pastel colours everywhere. All around, an absolutely delightful cupcake of a movie. And it suddenly gave me the urge to make a regency era outfit. I have a dress and a few accessory bits, but I really needed a hat.
So I dug around in my stash of thrifted straw hats for any I could use to make into a regency hat. I found one, it was ugly — a perfect candidate for refashioning. Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of it in it’s original state, but trust me it was bad.
At first I thought… bonnet, which seems to have been the most common headgear in the Regency era. There are tons of online tutorials on making bonnets and I still plan to make one with a matching spencer (fabric already in my stash), but not with this hat. One, it was just too ugly. I do not like the wide spacing of the straw, it needed to be covered, at least partially. And two, I wanted something a bit more….well, more.
After many hours spent on the internet, hat inspiration ( particularly for hat shape) actually came from older (but equally good) Austen adaptations. Specifically the 1995 Sense and Sensibility…
… and the 1996 Emma with Kate Beckinsale.
I can’t speak to how historically accurate this is, but I like it and that’s good enough.
And since we can’t really go anywhere and everything is closed anyway and I really didn’t want to buy new supplies online because I need the money to pay my rent, this had to be a purely stashbusting project.
Firstly, after removing all the original trims, the hat needed to be slightly reshaped. Mostly, the crown needed to be flattened. So I thoroughly wet it and flattened it over a large coffee tin and weighed it down until it dried.
The newly flattened crown.
Next, the underside of the brim needed covering. I found some white sheeting material and cut 4 1/4” (10.5 cm) wide strips and pleated them around, piecing in new strips as needed and hand sewed it down. It could be glued, but I prefer sewing.
Next, I covered the edge with some wide bias tape. Originally I wanted brown, but all I had was plum…
I found some 1 1/2” (4 cm) wide brown grosgrain ribbon and some 5/8” (1.5 cm) wide polka dot ribbon that sort of went together and made a cockade.
At this point I don’t have anymore progress photos because I finished the hat completely late one night while watching a movie. But I had some 2 1/2” (6.5 cm) wide brown and cream striped ribbon that had a wired edge and wrapped it around the crown to make a hat band and then made a bow on one side, using another 1” (2.5 cm) brown ribbon around the center of the bow….yes, I seem to have a never ending supply of brown ribbon…
I turned up the front brim of the hat almost flat to the crown and sewed it down, adding the cockade and an ostrich feather I took off another hat…
I turned up the back brim somewhat as well and sewed it down.
And a few photos of the finished outfit…
And, of course, the obligatory Regency wedgie…