Studio update: transitional Byzantine and Russian hat shape experiment, new Etsy listings

​I've mentioned before that I'm starting to mentally categorize historic hats by basic shape: cylinders, cones, helmet or dome, halo or diadem etc. One of the things that I find interesting is that I keep seeing 'intersection points' where two cultures with two different hat shapes come into contact, borrow from each other and you get a sort of hybrid of the two shapes. 

​One of the places that seems to be happening is in the Byzantine Empire. First you have the basic Mediterranean pillbox shape, a cylinder from 3-6 inches tall. Some seem to have circular tops, some you can't tell if they do or not. (I know this one is a metal crown, but I'm just talking about basic shape.)

​And the second type is the halo or a sort of extended diadem. It's cut on a curve with the small side at the bottom and it flares up and out. 

Some clearly have no top, others you can't tell. 

And the scale and angle of these hats varies wildly. Some are enormous, some are fairly petite. Some have a gentle curve, others are very dramatic.

Here is a link to my Extant Hats board on Pintrest:

​https://www.pinterest.com/jadifatima/extant-hats/

And so there are some depictions in paintings and mosaics where I can't really tell whether it's a pillbox with slightly slanted sides and a top or a halo. Which brings me to the dress.

I really love up-cycling fabrics for several reasons. One, it is such a period thing to do, especially with hats. 

Egyptian patchwork baby hat 13-14 c

Two, lots of modern fabrics, especially embroideries, are only produced for a single manufacturer for a single style of clothing and so re-working garments into hats gives me access to amazing textiles that aren't available to be purchased by the yard. Up-cycled Indian clothing is a particularly rich source of period-style, essentially one-of-a-kind textiles.

So I found this wonderful chocolate brown linen dress with white geometric embroidery on the hem and collar in a thrift store. The embroidery on the collar had to be sacrificed. Sometimes I can re-purpose a collar as a veil band, but the angle was too sharp and I had to toss it and I was sad.

The skirt was flared but fairly narrow so there was enough to make two hat brims. The embroidery had been added to the garment after it was sewn together so it was on a very gentle curve. And the geometric complex cross motifs are just perfect.

And yeah, I need to start taking 'before' photos. I was excited and grabbed the scissors before I grabbed the camera.

So I cut a pattern for a flared pillbox and decided to try an experiment, which brings me back to the idea of transitional hat styles.

​There are some cool images of really sharply flaring pillboxes/halos and I wondered if adding a stiff frame to the top of the hat would give me the profile I was looking for.

Etsy link is further down in the post.

​My standard pillbox hat has plastic canvas as a stiffener in the brim, but not in the circular crown of the hat because it isn't necessary to hold the cylinder shape.

This time I cut two different sized crowns, added plastic canvas to them and sewed them onto the two brims that were identical to see how the additional framing changed the shape and to see how much difference a change in size would make.

And as you can see, it made a difference in the profile. You can really see the difference in the shapes but the stiffened tops both do a really good job of holding the shape. 

But guess how much difference there is in the size of the tops? The larger one is ONE HALF INCH larger in circumference. Such a huge difference.

 Which, incidentally, is why I recommend playing with hat patterns with scrap fabric first. Because a small change makes such a huge difference and it's easy to over-correct.

Anyway, I really like how they came out and I will definitely make more that have a similar shape.

Etsy: what I listed:  Click on the link above an image if you want to go directly to the Etsy listing. There is more general historical info in the description box of each listing.

​Brown linen with straighter sides and blue veil

This one has the straighter sides

 Brown linen with more steeply slanted sides and purple veil

So in addition to the ones above, I also added 4 more framed pillboxes, all of which use up-cycled fabrics. You've seen this Korean brocade before, yes, I'm using every inch. I have several Mongol fuzzy hats in process from it too.

​Blue silk brocade with pink silk veil

Plain blue silk brocade in a smaller size

The geometric brocade below was made in Turkey. There is this huge industry in Turkey of reproduction Ottoman brocades that are lovely and high quality. They are then used to make fabulously expensive throw pillows, table runners, luggage and other bags to sell to tourists. When I was in Istanbul I was unable to find any yardage for sale and unwilling to pay the crazy prices. But now I recognize it when I see it at estate sales and thrift stores and I 'rescue' it since I can't seem to source this stuff any other way. 

This piece is in that category and two other hat brims from the same piece are the to-make pile.

Turkish geometric brocade

This marvelous embroidery on orange silk was rescued from an Indian garment and while I usually only include one veil per hat, this color combination was just too marvelous to pass up.

Embroidered orange silk

I know it is seeming like all-pillboxes-all-the-time but I promise I am making other stuff too. I have a stack of tajs that just need feather aigrettes. But we have a new kitten, so I didn't want to pull out the boxes of feathers and wired bead flowers and such without my husband on hand to cat-wrangle.

But look at this widdle face!

I would say that my husband found him but that would be wrong. The cat found Alec. He showed up at the door of Alec's office the morning after a horrible thunderstorm, demanding to be let in.

We lost our geriatric orange tabby Roxylena about this time last year and working from home in an empty house has been kind of awful. So Alec brought this little guy home.

His name is 'Timur the Mighty!' (I feel like the exclamation point is a critical part of the name somehow.) Timur was the given name of Tamerlane, Ghengis Khan's given name was Temujin and both mean "iron" with the added connotation of "strong" and "healthy". 

We have an old family friend who used to breed Rottweilers whose theory was that any pet will take on the opposite characteristics of the name you give them. Thus, any dog name Sugar or Fluffy will absolutely bite you always and forever. So her big 'scary' dogs had names like Maximilian and Lucretia and she had a cat name Attila and they were all as sweet as they could possibly be.

And Timur is a complete sweetie. So it seems to fit.

​I digress. Because KITTEN!

But anyway, next week more tajs, tall Ottoman and North Indian Mughal pillboxes and some Indian tunics.

Next post: Bead show loot!