Hats Off

Hello everyone! It has been a while since I last posted. Life has gotten a bit crazy. Just as an update about what I've been working on:

A giant wad of duct tape? No its actually a hat block I made. Totally a hack job but it does the job well. Plus I can stick pins into it to hold the shape of the hat as I'm working on it. It also gave me a way to use up some of my fabric scraps. I don't like throwing them away, but usually I'm stumped as to what to do with them.

To make my head block I put an a scrap of jersey over my head, used duct tape to as tightly as I could tape around the circumference of my head (I used jersey material because it stretches and can me kind of molded around my head so the finished form would be more accurate). I then used a few pieces of tape over the top of my head from ear to ear and front to back in order to get start getting the basic shape. Then it was just a matter of taping over the jersey fabric, and using my hands to figure which places were sparse and needed reinforcement. After having a duct tape bowel looking thing finished I stuffed it with more fabric scraps and then carefully duct taped it closed on the bottom. Its not perfect, but definitely workable for what I needed to do with it.

I found a dark brown floppy straw hat at a second hand store, and although I loved the color of the braided straw, I was not feeling the old lady floppy hat shape. A bit of time with a seam ripper and I had a roll of straw braid ready for reshaping. This is what I have so far on my hat block:

I'd like to make a cloche style hat. I figure I'd start molding it close to my head and at the end play with molding it into a flared shape. More pics to come as I continue building it up.