So I won my first (and most likely
only) Ebay auction last week!
It was for the craziest vintage hat I'd ever
seen: a sort of modified feathered pillbox with a fake feathered pheasant (complete with gold glue eyes and fun pompadour feathery poof) on top.
It even had trailing feathers in back (let's face it, I'm a total sucker for long, trailing feather accents), and the sides of the hat are covered in brown netting with random accent spots of gold glue.
Like I said, totally WILD vintage hat! According to the seller, it came out of a famous costume shop in Cincinnati, Ohio, that has been around since ~1840. This shop even supplies the annual bunny costumes to the White House each Easter! You can tell that the hat has seen better days - a few of the long tail feathers are broken off and missing, and there are bare spots on the sides of the hat where feathers are missing.
To me, it just adds character, and shows that the hat was well-used and hopefully well-loved. Given the crazy style and dark brown color, the hat was difficult to photograph, but we tried our best!
And in other hat-related news, my wonderfully crafty woodworking husband carved me out my first hat block this morning!
Let the millinery experimentation begin!!
Yesterday, Ryan and I went out on a morning-long outing to several local antique stores. I had promised to buy him a new old toyl (in this case an antique vice), and we also wanted to see if we could find any old hat blocks on the cheap. You never know what you'll come across around here!
Success!
We found a canvas-covered hat block (technically a wig stand, but you can absolutely use it for basic millinery work too - like any wood hat block, you just make sure to carefully cover it with plastic before steaming the felt!!), which will totally work for felting cloches and other types of skull-hugging hats. It even has the jack hole in the base for mounting on a spinner. I am so excited!
The block is (very lightly) marked 21 1/2, so a little small for my 22 in head size. However, I can easily pad it a bit with a layer of felt before using it to make hats for myself. Voila! Ingenuity!
Also found this cutie: a very pretty little pheasant! Quite long in length, and will look smashing on a sculptured fedora someday soon...
So I won my first (and most likely only) Ebay auction last week!
It was for the craziest vintage hat I'd ever seen: a sort of modified feathered pillbox with a fake feathered pheasant (complete with gold glue eyes and fun pompadour feathery poof) on top.
It even had trailing feathers in back (let's face it, I'm a total sucker for long, trailing feather accents), and the sides of the hat are covered in brown netting with random accent spots of gold glue.
Like I said, totally WILD vintage hat! According to the seller, it came out of a famous costume shop in Cincinnati, Ohio, that has been around since ~1840. This shop even supplies the annual bunny costumes to the White House each Easter! You can tell that the hat has seen better days - a few of the long tail feathers are broken off and missing, and there are bare spots on the sides of the hat where feathers are missing.
To me, it just adds character, and shows that the hat was well-used and hopefully well-loved. Given the crazy style and dark brown color, the hat was difficult to photograph, but we tried our best!
And in other hat-related news, my wonderfully crafty woodworking husband carved me out my first hat block this morning!
Let the millinery experimentation begin!!
