Green Cloche

It's hard not to want to keep all the hats I make. But here's another peek at one I made for myself. Interestingly, my personal hats aren't as nice as the ones I make for sale; I sometimes skimp or cut corners on the interior (e.g. by not including a headsize ribbon or by having threads showing).

This is a freeform cloche in fur felt with a salome (heathered) finish in bronze. I like how it covers my ears. Nice and warm.

My (Current) Favorite Hat

My favorite hat styles tend to come from the 1930s. I think what I love most are the asymmetrical shapes. And tilt hats! So a lot of my millinery work draws inspiration from the '30s (even if it isn't actually historically accurate to the time).

Here is one of my creations from my "personal collection." Haha! That sounds so fancy and artsy and official. Ahem, in other words: I made this hat and kept it for myself. :)

It's designed to be worn tilted to the left (and slightly forward), so that even though the brim is asymmetrical, it sticks out the same distance from the head once angled. Self-fabric band and trim. Made from a velour fur felt hood in antique rose. I think it looks better on me than it does on my "model," but I haven't managed to get photos of myself in the hat yet. (Oh, and I get lots of compliments when I wear it. Yay!)

Procrastination through ... shoes?

I ended up procrastinating and neglecting my hat-making a while this summer/fall. And the reason was because I was in the ensemble of Sweeney Todd at Stowe Theatre Guild. The director changed the time period of the show to be 1745. Our Mrs. Lovett — an actor after my own detail-obsessed heart — had period appropriate shoes that she had gotten while studying in England. The rest of the girls were stuck wearing character shoes, jazz shoes or Victorian-style boots. *shudder*

That wouldn't do for my obsession with historical accuracy, so I decided to ... make my own shoes. In classic "me" fashion, I undertook a sizable project when no one would have cared or thought less of me for just wearing character shoes. And I'd never done anything with shoes before, but I didn't let that dissuade me. What I did was take a pair of character shoes and modded them to look more period appropriate by sewing up brocade fabric in the proper shapes and gluing the fabric to the character shoes. (I don't use a glue gun in my millinery work. I promise!)

Here is the result:

The image quality isn't the best (being taken in dim backstage conditions), and the neon backstage tape doesn't exactly add to the period mood. But I'm pretty proud of my work. My castmates were jealous and some people did notice (mostly fellow costume geeks).

Color, color, color!

Maybe I'm about a month late to the party, but I was just checking out the Spring 2013 colors from Pantone. I love them all! Really, I just love color. I was less than happy working at a job that required me to wear all black all the time (for which I showed up to the interview wearing a fuchsia skirt and a bright, busy, multi-colored top).

I'm not one to be a slave to trends in the least. I make what I like and what my creativity inspires me to do. So I'm not going to pull out these colors just because they're on trend. Still, it's nice to see what the fashion industry is doing so I can coordinate if I want.

Plus, pretty colors. Always fun.

Source: pantone.com via Kristin on Pinterest

And Twitter

And here's the link to my Twitter account:

Follow @SilverhillHats

I am on Pinterest

I dragged my feet for the longest time on joining Pinterest. There are just so many things about the site that are so cheesy to me. But the great thing about it is that you can use it however you want. So there will be no avalanche of recipes or kids' craft ideas from me. Just hats and vintage-y things.

"Great hat!"

I don't just wear my own creations. I have a lot of hats that I did not make, and I wear them often. And I've received countless compliments on one mass-produced hat or other. Usually it's "great hat!" That's not strictly a compliment for me because I didn't make the hat.

And then I realized: When people say "great hat," they're not usually complimenting the hat at all. I might be wearing a mass-produced hat that is a good hat or an okay hat, but not a great hat.

What people are really saying is "You're wearing a hat! That's so great! Good for you for rocking that hat!" And that is a compliment. :)

Now we just need to increase hatty awareness so that merely wearing a hat isn't novel enough to earn a compliment and so that people can start to appreciate the difference between an okay hat and a "great" hat.