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

My hat blocks

It's perfectly possible to make hats without hat blocks, you can knit and crochet them and you can make them out of flat pattern pieces. However, if you have a hat block your shape possibilities increases. Sadly hat blocks are quite expensive, but you can block hats on other things as well, like a bowl or pan- anything that has a shape you can turn into a hat. You can also make hat blocks yourself. Below is one a friend's husband made for me by glueing layers of plywood together and the cutting it into shape with the help of a bandsaw. This one has a very nice shape for a larger pillbox hat. Beside it is a large Styrofoam ball which you can use to shape a fascinator base.