Regency Costume and Hat

The Jane Austen movie club, as we call ourselves, was planning a night to watch Pride and Prejudice, (2005, with Kiera Knightly) so I decided to dress up. I was playing with a crossover bodice pattern and I used the "practice" bodice for the top of my costume. I wore a blouse of my mom's underneath just for the sleeves. Underneath I wore a strapless dress that I put together by sewing a big piece of fabric into a tube and putting elastic at the top. I think is turned out looking rather nice. It has many problems, though, such as having stains and unfinished edges, but it was only intended to work for a few hours anyways!


Now the hat now is a different story. I found this wonderful book at the library called, From the Neck up: an Illustrated Guide to Hatmaking by Denise Dreher. It is a wonderful book with instructions to make all sorts of historical hats. I used a pattern from the book to make a hat for the last Pride and Prejudice movie night. That book coupled with inspiration from the lovely hats in Emma (with Romola Garai, 2009) was enough to make me excited to attempt another hat. I wanted to make a wide-brimmed, straw-like hat, but I didn't know what to make it out of that would be stiff enough. I preferred to use burlap but the only colors we had were Christmas green and red. My mom thought that the color might bleed out in hot water so I decided to go for it. First I had to find the fabric. As I was digging through a box of fabric I was overjoyed to find a good-sized remnant of tan burlap! Yay! My plan was to sew the hat together and then saturate it in watery glue to make it stiff. This method I learned in my backstage class from my acting teacher. In class we did it with felt and made crowns, but I made a sample with the burlap and it seemed to work. I drafted the pattern following the directions in the book and then sewed it together. The brim is one piece and the crown has six gores.

This is the hat before I applied the glue:

Then I began to coat both sides in glue. Not too much or it would dry into a glue puddle, but enough to make it stiff. I found that a piece of rag was the best instrument to apply the glue.

The hat was left to dry on aluminum foil so it wouldn't stick.

The wet hat:

The finished product:

I added a ribbon and a purple flower:

My inspiration:

Photos by April, Craig, and Alayna