Make a Paper Top Hat

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bristol board, card stock, creative, hat, how to, instructions, make, paper, punch, top hat

Click here for a pdf of pattern pieces and instructions.

Materials:

• 4 – 11” x 14” pieces of Bristol board or other light weight board such as poster board. One piece of the 4 is for making the templates. I used Strathmore 300 Series Bristol board for both my templates and hat pieces.
• 7.5 yards yarn or ribbon for lacing – I used worsted weight micro-fiber yarn
• blunt point yarn needle
• sharp 6H or 4H or 2H pencil
• scissors
• paper punch

I make templates of each pattern piece out of Bristol Board. I then use the templates to trace all pieces needed for the hat. I recommend sharpening your pencil frequently to have the most precise and easily removed lines to follow in cutting and punching. My thin pencil lines are removed when I cut out the pieces. For the greatest accuracy, I just barely cut off the pencil line; no more than that. The paper punch removes the traced punch guide circles.

Click here for a pdf of pattern pieces and instructions.

©2014 Alice Frenz All Rights Reserved

Read more about this hat in Sewing Card Top Hat.

Sewing Card Top Hat

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bristol board, card stock, design, hat pattern, paper, pattern, top hat, white

I designed this paper top hat as part of a 5 day hat design workshop at Miami University “The Art of the Hat” with British milliner Dagmara Childs. My design was inspired by the sewing cards that children play with, where they use yarn laced through pre-punched holes to decorate or assemble pieces made from card stock or wood.

60’s Mod Fashion Helmet

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1960's, buckram, fashion helmet, hat, hat block, millinery, mod

This is the outer buckram shape I created for my mod helmet design.

We often don’t think enough about the underlying structure that is required to make a design work well. In many cases, more time and effort must be spent in creating the proper foundation or under-structure than we first anticipate.

Playing with Pins

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fiber art, millinery, pins, trim

Punk rockers are credited with being the first to use safety pins to embellish clothing (and more). It’s an idea that’s been repeated and admired ever since. I was very inspired by the 1987 safety pin covered mini dress and shawl designed by Stephen Sprouse in the 2012 IMA exhibition An American Legacy: Norell, Blass, Halston, and Sprouse.

Test Sewing Fortunes

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fortune, plastic, sewing test, wearable art

I’ve been collecting fortunes from fortune cookies to use in making an art hat. I’ve always saved my favorite fortunes and pinned them up in my work areas as inspirational messages. After I had quite a few, I had the idea to make them into a hat.

I did a few tests, stitching copies of the fortunes between layers of plastic. I’m saving the original fortunes for the final hat. The idea of a plastic covered hat appeals to me because it makes me think of the design as a rain hat. I think of the fortunes as being a positive outlook on a rainy day. I need their positive messages or sometimes odd humor when things aren’t going well; when it’s raining.

©2012 Alice Frenz

Fulled Wool Hat

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felt, fulling, hat, millinery, wool yarn

Fulling is a variation of felting that uses knit or woven fibers rather than loose fibers. For this hat, I knitted 2 strands of worsted weight wool with eyelash and feather yarns. The decorative yarns were used to create interesting surface variation in texture, color change, and reflection of light.

Basic Buckram Shapes

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buckram, hat block, millinery

I’ve been creating basic 3D shapes with heavy buckram as a starting point to make decisions about sizes, proportion, and shaping of new hat designs.