Make your own hats

A lot of people find the idea of hat making completely daunting, but in reality it isn't so hard. True, some models demand a hat block, but it is also possible to construct hats with the help of wire, sewing them from a pattern or crochet. At the  University of Wisconsin Digital Collections website I found several books on millinery, ready to be read and learned from. My absolute favourite is this little gem; How to make and trim your own hats by Vee Walker Powell, published in 1944. It's not overly in depth, but it gives a clear overview with lots of helpful suggestions and diagrams. And the illustrations are just darling!

The content:

 And I love that on the subjects of what hat that fits you, the book tells us; "No rules, just common sense"!

If you want more, then complement Your Millinery by Winifred Reiser, 1949, a much denser volume with a lot of instructions and explanations!

As I know many of you are interested in other epoques as well, the website also contain these books on millinery:

Millinery: Theoretical and Practical by Clare Hill, 1909

The Art of Millinery: A Complete Series of Practical Lessons For the Artiste and the Amateur by Anna Ben Yûsuf, 1909

Millinery as A Trade For Women by Lorinda Perry, 1916

Make Your Own Hats by Mrs. Gene Allen Martin, 1921

Millinery by Charlotte Rankin Aiken, 1922

Straw Hats, Their History and Manufacture by Harry Inwards, 1922

Practical Millinery by Florence Anslow, 1922

A century of hats and the hats of the century by Edward Mott Wooley, 1923

Millinery by Jane Loewen, 1925

How To Make Hats; A Method of Self-instruction Using Job Sheets by Rosalind Weiss, 1931

Rebecca

Last night I dreamt about Manderley.

Rebecca from 1940 is my favourite Hitchcock movie and in my view also a very good adaption from the book by Daphne du Maurier. A young and rather insecure woman (Joan Fontaine) meets and falls in love with the glamorous widower Max de Winter (Laurence Olivier. Despite knowing that he mourns the loss of his prefect wife Rebecca, who has drowned a year previously, she marries him and comes with to his manor house Manderley. There she is confronted with the very scary housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) who was fanatically devoted to Rebecca. The heroine feels if anything even more insecure and increasingly uncomfortable at Manderley and when Rebecca’s body is recovered from the sea, everything comes crashing down.

This is not a grand costume movie, but just because the heroine is so very ordinary, her clothes are quite interesting anyway. And of course, the movie is well worth watching for the suspenseful plot and the excellent actors. Joan Fontaine is perfect as the ugly duckling and Laurence Olivier is dreamy. Judith Anderson is perfectly horrible and then there’s my favourite Golden era bad boy George Sanders as Rebecca’s nasty cousin.