1880s French Bonnet
Oddly enough, the first piece of Victorian clothing I made was a bonnet. I was surprised and excited about how easily it went together. I thought making a hat would be exceptionally difficult. It's not the most beautiful hat I have ever seen, but I am quite proud of it!
I don't adhere to strict historical accuracy. I'm not a reenactor. I just love making pretty things. I do try to stick with natural fibers everywhere that I can, but I do most of the work on my sewing machine, not by hand. And when I find something that is just beautiful and matches or coordinates with a project that I'm working on, but isn't 100% natural fiber of some kind, I'll use it, because I only care that I made something pretty, not that I might get arrested and sentenced to manual labor for using a 95% Cotton / 5% Lycra mix. :-)
My First Victorian Bonnet...
Little cluster of flowers on one side...
I used Truly Victorian pattern TV551 1880s French Bonnet Frame. Heather makes wonderful patterns (of which I am a proud owner of many!!) that are easy to understand and use. I used a medium-ish weight cream cotton with millions of tiny green flowers on it (that probably wasn't accurate to the 1880s, but it was pretty.) The ruching on the underside of the brim is a pretty buttercream yellow light weight (I could write a whole entry on this particular piece of fabric, I loved it so much) cotton. The flowers were a craft store find, and I deemed them not "too" plastic-y, and they just looked so pretty on the bonnet. The ribbon is just a cream grosgrain. I don't think it was a natural fiber. To be honest, I don't even know if grosgrain comes in 100% cotton anymore, or if it ever did, but if anyone knows the answer to that, and where I could find it if it exists, let me know!
I later used another of the Truly Victorian patterns, TV550 1880s Tapered Hat, to make a hat. It was also super easy to put together. I don't have pictures of it yet, but I will post them here as soon as I get some. The first one I made to try it out, and to make a pretty hat. The second one was made for a steampunk style sort of game, and it's supposed to look a little ragged. To be honest, I couldn't bring myself to distress it all that much, so the only part that really looks ragged is the tails of the bow on the back of it.
I didn't use any of the supplies that the pattern called for on either the hat or the bonnet. In both cases, I used Pellon Peltex 70 and 20 gauge craft wire that I got in the jewelry section of Michael's craft store. I did do all the sewing on these two projects by hand, for the simple reason that there is no real way to get these pieces onto your machine for sewing, nor would it be very safe if you could!
