Making a Victorian Bustle-Era Hat

Hello darlings!

I’m in the midst of making my bustle dress so for an interlude I thought I’d work on an era-appropriate hat. No Victorian outfit is complete without a hat!

I found this fabulous hat on Pinterest that I thought I’d use as a basis for my own. For the majority of this tutorial I followed the steps outlined by Fabric & Fiction for their Ravenclaw 1870s Hat. 

To begin, I played around with cardboard and scotch tape to create the hat pattern. It took a few attempts before I was happy with it, and I still wanted to add more shaping to the back on the final hat.

I cut the brim out of buckram with no seam allowance, except at the inner edge which will be used to attach the brim to the crown. Because it had so much shape I had to cut it in two pieces, some extra to allow for overlap. Using the overlap I stitched the two halves together. 

Then I added wire to the rim of the brim by simply whipping it to the edge.

I covered the wire with bias. 

I decided to re-do this brim later as I wasn’t happy with the shape!

Then I cut out the top of the crown and added wire to the edge and covered it with bias, the same steps as the brim. 

For the rest of the crown I cut it in two halves with some overlap which I used to sew the two parts together, much the same as the brim. This didn’t need any seam allowance. 

I added wire which I then covered with bias. 

I joined the two parts of the crown together by whip-stitching them together through the bias binding, so I didn’t have to go through all of the layers. 

Then it’s time to attach all the pieces! I cut into the seam allowance of the brim (as you can see I went a little further than the drawn line to improve the shape), then sewed the crown to the brim. 

To improve the sad shape of the brim I gave it a good steam with my iron, propping up the back with a scrap towel to give it a nice rounded shape. 

That’s more like it!

I cut the whole hat shape out of felt with no seam allowances and attached it to the hat base using long stitches (a process called ‘mulling’ apparently). I sewed the top of the crown first, pulling it over the edge before sewing the felt around the crown. 

Before covering the outside of the hat I lined the inside, so any stitches I made attaching the lining would be covered by the final fabric. I sewed the crown lining pieces together (the two sides and top) before placing it inside the hat base. I cut the seam allowances leading into the brim and sewed it down just at the crease between crown and brim, plus a couple of stay-stitches at the top of the crown so it wouldn’t collapse on top of the head. 

I cut up the pattern piece of the brim and left large gaps between the pieces when I cut out the brim lining. I used a loose stitch on the machine to gather the lining. On the inner edge I tucked the seam allowance under and whipped the brim lining to the crown lining. On the outer edge I did long straight stitches to attach it. This didn’t have to be terribly neat as it’s being covered with bias in a moment. 

Now it’s time to cover the top of the hat! I started with the top of the crown, pulling it taut as I stitched to make sure it was flat and wrinkle-free.

Then I added the brim top fabric and covered both the top of the crown and brim raw edges with the fabric around the crown. I used very tiny stitches to attach all the pieces together so they would be as invisible as possible. 

The final step (at least before decoration) was to cover the edge of the brim in bias, sealing all of the raw edges and giving a nice, neat finish to the hat. 

And here it is decorated! Hope you enjoyed this blog post, show me your millinery triumphs in the comments!

Until next time, 

Aisha x