Why the name Columbus, you ask? Well, I was going for a 1940s hat, but when I tried it on for the first time, this is the image that came to mind! 😀
I started this wool felt hat at the end of October 2014, but then I sort of lost interest in millinery for more than a year. I kept reading about millinery and collecting images and documentation, yet couldn’t be bothered making a hat, or even finishing the one I had started for that matter.
It’s only recently that I understood the reason for that loss of mojo, right when I also got said mojo back: my hair had simply become too long to play nice with the kind of hats I like… Lame but true! From the moment I decided to cut it short, my hands started itching to work again on the hat I had abandoned more than a year before! There wasn’t a lot left to do so I finished it before even getting an appointment at my hairdresser’s.
You can’t really make out any details in the pictures of me wearing the hat, especially since the black felt blends in with my hair, but at least you get an idea of how I wear it pushed back.
I moulded the crown of the hat on a simple hat block, then I flipped the brim upwards and hand sewed some millinery wire all around the edge (which you can see in this picture – it’s the white stuff around the brim) for it to keep its shape. This is where I took a more-than-one-year break.
Then I hand sewed some velvet ribbon around the edge of the brim to cover the wire and some petersham ribbon inside the hat so that it hugs the head and doesn’t flop around.
I wonder if someday it will stop feeling like magic to be able to make a hat that’s in my imagination come true?