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 What
can a hat say about a doll? More than any other clothing
item, a hat expresses style, attitude, status and a wide
range of moods. It can suggest financial means, convey marital
status and indicate religion. A hat can create the costume
or complete the outfit. It reveals the inner nature of the
wearer and thus, a hat makes a defining statement about
the doll.
After
completing our shoe class in 1998 "Creating Fabulous
Footwear for Cloth Dolls
the next stop on our doll making journey was to improve
our millinery skills. We researched and studied human hat
making techniques and then converted what we learned into
doll terms. We were most influenced by the wonderful book
From the Neck Up - An Illustrated Guide to Hatmaking by
Denise Dreher (ISBN-41082-00-8.)
We
eventually published a new book "Creating Heavenly
Hats for Discriminating Dolls" in 1999. We then
worked to develop online hatmaking
classes for dolls. This first course, "Hat
Making Fun-damentals", lays the groundwork for
the other class. Because this information is so important
and is a pre-requisite for all the other hat class, we
are offering it as a free class.
Our hatmaking courses are based on information published
in our book, but we have added new projects, colored photographs
with step-by-step directions and updated information.
When
we are developing material we have what we call "work
days" where we'll spend the day making a certain thing.
It is not unusual, however, for us to start out making bonnets
and end up making a Samurai helmet instead! We just never
know where the seed of an idea will take us. For this series
of hatmaking courses, we have endeavored to lay out and
present the material in a logical progression, each lesson
building on the one before. Our goal is to help you build
a strong foundation on classic millinery techniques. Our
ultimate goal is to enable you to look at any hat, recognize
and understand how it is made and recreate it for a doll
of any size, shape or composition. Every technique will
also apply to hat making for animals and non-human figures.
Bonnie
and Mary Ann
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