Repairing and Redecorating an Antique Hat

Of course I forgot to take a before shot. My first excuse is that these repair projects tend to be spur-of-the-moment endeavors. I sift through the to-do pile, pick something up, and don’t realize I’m officially working on it until it’s well underway. By then it’s too late to show you how it originally looked. Either that or I’m a bit dim. Reader’s choice.

When I found it, the black, late 1910s/early 1920s hat was in very bad shape. It's surface was completely rotted, so it shed everywhere and got under my fingernails. So yucky. But the shape was lovely and iconic, and I knew I could do something with it. While working, I taped down wax paper to keep my work surfaces clean, but it was still a mess.

Also, the crown and the brim were disconnected because the original thread connecting them had deteriorated. And, the crown lining was gone. All that remained of the original embellishments were a few anemic, velvety strings that looked like creepy, sad worms. Those went directly into the trash.

Here's what I did, in order:

1. Picked two coordinating, big-enough remnants from my stash.

2. Restitched the crown to the brim.

3. Lined the crown with silky synthetic fabric. (Then, reopened a portion to glue in a folded piece of poly batting. I’d forgotten to steam the crumpled crown back into shape and it was too late now. The batting did the trick, make it smoother and slightly rounded, but of course I got glue on my new lining. Sigh. At least it dried clear.)

4. Covered the under-brim with patterned fabric (I think it’s leftover 1970s Ultrasuede from one of my mom's projects).
 
5. Covered the crown top, then its sides, and then the outer brim, with a high-quality velvet.

6. Made a bow (two tubes, one big, one small) from more of the patterned fabric, arranged modern floral and antique feathers from my millinery stash until I liked how it looked, stitched all that on, then stitched on a little bird.

I could've done all of this, start to finish, with hot glue. But for whatever reason, I seem to prefer stabbing myself repeatedly. You may feel otherwise. Feel free to do what works for you. There are no millinery upcycling police that I know of.

The only machine sewing I did was at the outer edge of the brim – first for the under, then for the outer, and some basting of raw edges on the band and the bow. What remained of the outer-brim fabric after sewing and trimming got folded under and hand-stitched to create a neat-as-I-could-manage finished inner edge.

My second excuse for failing to document "before" and also "first steps" is that I get so wrapped up in the doing, I don’t think about anything else, including any potential future blog post. That's part of what makes it so enjoyable.

All this to say, I only thought to take the first photo after I'd already reattached crown to brim, added the crown lining, and started stitching on the crown cover. Here are annotated images, starting from that point, in order: 

Here, I've already attached the vertical portion of the brim cover to the top oval, folding under the raw edge as I went. Now I'm adding the outer-brim cover. I think I had bobbin or tension trouble, because I had to stop partway through:

The next step was tacking down the outer-brim cover along the base of the crown. That would get hidden by the band, so it didn't need to be super neat, just reasonably so.

Next, I made the band (just a strip of patterned fabric with raw edges folded and basted), and stitched it to the hat, hiding the ends beneath the lapped ends of the crown fabric:

Here's how it looked after all this was stitched in place:

Next, time to finish the interior:

Next up, embellishments:

Attached them one by one:

Et voila! Finis. Here I am modeling the finished product, just after completion:

And here I am, a few days later, volunteering at Atlanta's Historic Oakland Cemetery for the annual Capturing the Spirit of Oakland history tour. My dress is an antique original. How would you describe the hat? Perhaps as the opposite of me -- Old on the inside, young on the outside? 

 
If you enjoyed seeing this process, you might also like learning how to make a Regency bonnet or how to recreate an Edwardian hat. Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment!

- Liza