Some photos that SHOULD have gone with the previous post

Hello all!

Here are a couple of shots of the fascinator that I made in the Izzie Lewis class at Nancy's Sewing Basket here in Seattle.  I think it kinda got a little carried away - I'd brought all this stuff (feathers, netting, organdy, brooch, horsehair) to Maybe use on the fascinator, and I ended up, er....using all of it. It has a bit of a multiple personality disorder, but if we just assume that it's supposed to be "over the top", I'd say we hit that nail on the head. Here are the now standard "finished it on the ferry and took a cell phone picture" shots. I need to put my hair up and take a good photo with it on, though I'd look a leedle bit like a saloon girl. 

(click make big)

Whimsy-R-Us, anyone?

 See what I mean? The left side is all explosive-net-foo-with-a-funky-feather-thing-reminiscent-of- Dr Seuss (LOVE IT), and the right side is all rolled-organdy-elegant drape- lily leaves (Love it too!!) but the only thing they have in common is being black, and being on the same little comb base thingy. 

I clearly need to make more of them to "clarify my vision"  Then I need to figure out what to DO with them. I can only wear maybe one a year with the events that I attend, and I can donate one or two to the charity auction.

Though - I had NO idea how much veiling costs. NO idea. Wowza.

In unrelated news, here's a happy picture of Wayne Wichern (that SF milliner dude of awesomeness) in his shop. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what a lifetime collection of hat blocks looks like. Actually, this picture maybe shows 1/5th of his total collection. I was amazed. LOVED the nets hanging from the ceiling that held a bunch of stuff, too.

I got tons of ideas just spending an hour and a half with him. his work is SOOO clean, and his eye is artistic, and he was so delightfully real. Any of you who actually know me should know how important that is to me. I've got about ten seconds of patience for people who are not real.

If you ever get a chance - buy this guy's work. He's totally worth it.

So much hat stuff - so little time!

Aannd - so much hat stuff has happened in the last little while that I've NO idea where to start.

• Met Wayne Wichern in San Fransisco (AWESOME!)
• Went to the Dancing Hats event in Seattle where I met a whole bucket of wonderful local Seattle milliners
• Attended another Nancy's Sewing Basket class, (taught by Izzie Lewis) where I made my first fascinator AND actually made some wonderful rolled edge organza flowers, of which there WILL be pictures but are not yet.
• Have developed a totally new style of hat in my "line" which is a pretty standard eight piece newsboy cap. They are cute, adjustable, unisex, sewn hats and I'm having SO much fun with them! I've no idea yet where my marketplace will be. Thinking about farmer's markets and/or Etsy
• Got reading/sewing glasses - cause apparently 41 is old enough to warrant those :(
• And sent this custom order off in the nick of time:

He's lookin SO awesome!

I love it when customers provide me with photos of the hats in their natural habitat.

two hats in their infancy

And here we see the birth of a lovely little forest green number, looking forward to meeting her owner in Oklahoma :) I used the new block on this and so for, so Great! (though the dowel on my spinner was too tight. Tim to get out the sandpaper and some elbow grease. I thought I would NEVER get that block back off the spinner. I also need to find my metal push pins....which are still packed.....somewhere...

 And the Lovely new fur felt Cavalier hat to go with a 1669 buffcoat. It goins ta be scrumdillyumptious. I'm going to get a full 5" out of this brim. Woot!

 And a couple of shots of the absolute disaster that is my workspace after preparing for the hat workshop.

 This HAS to improve immediately.

Hooray for sunny warm dry hatmaking days! I may be able to size both the new baby hats tonight - which is good, cause the Cavalier hat is due like immediately.

And that is all.

Hat class in LA was awesome!

Though I do admit that I am glad to be home again, the class was a total win-win!

They even fed us beautiful homemade food for lunch and dinner!! I have pics of that somewhere...

yes...the class:

I taught three cockades that I learned from Candace Kling, gave a lecture with samples about millinery materials and sources, a hands-on section about feather work, (buying, curling, wiring, combining) and a demo of pulling a felt hat.

The only thing I forgot was my super-neat stack of crinoline squares, but my generous host, Giles, had some double buckram that I disassembled and made work. Not bad, all things considered.

It was very well attended: 15 students, two of them from the blog universe (Hi Austin and Coleen!) and the rest from the SCA. The group was a perfect size. Here they are, in the next two images:

 It seems that I only managed to take photos during the cockades classes, since the materials class was just me talking about a handout with samples and the pulling demo was, well, I had my hands full then. I could/should have taken photos of the featherwork section, but we were running behind and I was prepping for the pulling demo.
Here are some great shots of some of the students' cockade work:

In other news, I had a stack of custom orders kindof piling up for me at home, and I've wasted no time getting them started. After going to hat class at Izzie's (hooray! only a two month hiatus. Sheesh) I began two baby hats.

Hmm....blogthing won't let me add more piccies right now. Will post this and post more ab out the baby hats later. Also will post about the shop-of-chaos, which is going to get cleaned this long weekend.

After we go crabbing :)

Cheers all - and THANKS to everyone who came to the workshop and who made it possible. I know it was a lot of work, a lot of prep, a lot of cooking (thanks Joe and entire kitchen crew!!) but mostly a LOT of fun.

three new blocks!

And by NEW blocks, I mean "custom made by this awesome artisan in the shop at the Seattle Children's Theatre" kindof new. Newly come into the world - just for me -squeaky squawky new. Here they am:

Squee!

From left to right we have:

• A very "I made this up myself" experimental kind of block, which can be sized down by taking off the 5/8" layers at the bottom. These are basically a series of tapered headsize plates. When I remove plates, the hat gets shorter but this style tends to scale down pretty well that way anyway. Each 5/8" layer adds about 1/2" to the circumference. Using the various configurations of this block, I can get various sizes from 21"(Gwenneth size) to 24.5"(Giles size). We'll see if the use of plywood for these plates is workable or not. This multi-block is on a base with two dowels that hold the entire apparatus together - like a spinner with two spindles. I need to sand down the dowels so that the layers can come off more easily, but it is totally working.
• A 23.5", slightly-taller-than-my-current-ones cavalier hat block. This is Thore'-and-everybody-else-who-has-ordered-this-year sized. My largest flat topped block before was 23". (Ok, I've also got this freakishly large 26" block that I made and used one time only for a theatre who needed a hat for this 18th century dude in a periwig, but that hardly counts.) Murphy's law says, of course, that now only people with 22" heads will want cavalier hats. But I'm prepared for that too :)
• A 23.5" tall hat block. Again, I had a 23ish one and a 24ish one, and this has a slightly different profile. (more like one of the extant ones.) Under this block is a spinner with a small enough spindle for the blocks I have. My collection of spinners is now less pathetic, though still not robust.

I can't wait to try these out!

But I haz to to wait. :( Cause I'm preparing to teach a full-day millinery workshop in LA this weekend!)

If ever there was a good reason to have to wait....that's sounds like one to me.

The to-do list is long, but shrinking every day.

Wish me luck :)



Two cockades - process shots

Here are some of my process shots of a couple of the cockades I made

 in the Candace Kling Cockades Class (hereafter known as the CKCC)

Here is a paper mockup:

 And here are the loops I cut out of 1.5" ribbon:

 The loops all sewn together in that very specific way...

 And the cockade laid out on crinoline and pinned out on the grid, all ready to stitch in place.

 The crinoline trimmed down, the loops pinned with teensy clips, stitching with strong thread. You can see what it is going to look like here, just needs the crinoline to be trimmed back and a button stitched over the center.

 A different cockade, I made 22 (I think) of these motifs. Made them in the green paper first - just to figure out what I was doing.

 All pinned to the grid. I didn't get this stitched till many days later, but isn't it AWESOME!

And....that's all she wrote today.

Cockade class! and Houston trip teasers

 So - I do not yet have time to do a full descriptive write-up of ANY of the groovy things that have transpired in the last month, but I will throw out some quick descriptions and some teaser pics:

Cockades class at Nancy's Sewing Basket: First of all, this place Rawkes. It is scary that I can get on a bus from my work and be there in 18 minutes. They had this black wool fabric embroidered allover with solid chainstiched flowers that is screaming to be another Jacobean jacket (which I don't need)...and this amazing ribbon room...and these very awesome people there...and I bought a porcupine quill. Yep. I actually did need one of those, if you must know, and though I have since found them for much cheaper, I would have to have bought 50 when  I just need ONE)

The class itself (which I squealed about being signed up for four months ago) was absolutely everything it was cracked up to be. Candace Kling : www.candacekling.com is a fabulous teacher. I have not had such an intensive and fast paced class since the MFA program. Candace told us that she was going to teach to the fastest student, meaning that the speedy folks would get more assignments, and not sit there waiting for the slower folks to finish up. This was a brilliant way to do it, and I really just want to pack her up and bring her home with me.

If you haven't had the chance to take one of her classes, Run, do not walk, to sign up. Her "art bar" is very high, her process is well thought out and well practiced, her enthusiasm is contagious and her research and experience is extensive. What more could you want? Maybe the best part was that she taught us to fish. You know - did not just tell us how to make three cockades. Told us how to invent them, and how to look at extant pieces and pictures in ribbon books from 1920 something and figure out what the books SHOULD have told us about how to make the cockades therein.  I got eyes that can look at the fabulous things I see and go home and probably figure out how to make many of them myself.  Score!

Here are some quick and dirty shots of a few of my samples from the class:

 And one process shot of making the stripey cockade with the gold button:

Here's one - all ready for me to figure out what to do with it now:

On to the Houston hat sales event - (of which I took almost Zero photos.) I was too busy hugging people I haven't seen in way too long and putting hats on people to take photos.  Here's one shot of me and my youngest godson (who now haz a trulyhat but did not have said hat yet), and then a photo of a hat and its newly adopted person. I even had a grey feather to add to his hat, making it beyond perfect for his outfit.

And....just so that I remember HOW great I used to have it, here are two photos of just ONE of the ginormous fabric stores in Houston.  This is High Fashion Fabrics. (insert angel choir music here) There's a whole wall of embroidered silks, and the wool gabardine section is separate from the wool suiting section.  *le SIGH*

That's ok. I'm going to Britex in June. And then the LA fabric district. And then New York for a supply run. I should be all fabric'd out by August, don't you think?

Me neither. :)