Ruby's Hats

These hats I made, the grey and blue ones I made entirely, cut the brim from a stiff polyester craft felt bought at Joann's. The blue hat has a crocheted crown, the brim is covered with taffeta(manmade). The grey hat I used that wonderfully soft polyester micro-suede, I lined the inside with lavender scrap cotton left over from another project. Both the blue and grey hats are too big for the mannequin head, I have a fat head, I can't fix that, so....

The green hat has a frame I bought here;
they have awesome 'raw frames'. I also used some Vogue patterns, but as usual I made several changes. I noticed that "summer" hats are either wide-brimmed or veiled & small. I bought veiling from here.
Also vintage veiling from here
The above has vintage forget-me-nots, in velvet and paper, there are many flowers with labels that say: Made in West Germany, Made in France, etc. I put forget-me-nots on the green hat above, the lily is new from Joann's. What looks to me like rosebuds can be found in many shops that sell vintage trims, sometimes these are called 'cactus buds'. They are made of a vintage plastic and are flocked to varying degrees with green, little 'slits' are cut out and rose-ish pinkish color can be seen.

The veiling I pin on while wearing the hat, difficult but to have the veiling cocoon around the face how I like means having to shift it around and use clothespins, then sewing the veiling on by hand. It helped having actual vintage hats to study, and some of those had veiling only past the eyes, some looked like the veiling was permanently folded back over the hat, like lace.