It Ain't Easy Being a Milliner's Muse

Let me tell you something about making a hat. Even a simple hat. It requires mad skills in the departments of geometry, sewing and aesthetics. I have a whole new respect for hatmakers. Just attempting a well formed sunhat in double layer linen required me to make about 14, 231 practice patterns to get the right fit. Here was the finished piece which I was quite happy with if only for the fact that I escaped the common pitfall of the frumpy, square poofy top-hat that results from half of the free patterns on-line and also the overly rounded baby-doll floppyness that was the product of any of the other half of the patterns. All in all it was a valiant first effort.





Now that it's getting cold, next up are a series of winter hats. My baby has no hair, you see, so I am going to have to keep her noggin cozy. And so she was patient enough to let me fit her with the first draft of a three-panel hat pattern, which will hopefully spawn some lovely sewn knit baby lids. We'll see.