Posts
The post features gorgeous photos by Jude Mooney.
For more photos from the shoot, see the full blog post here.
Some of you may remember this hat from an earlier post I made about my trip to Venice, Italy for Carnival in 2011. Here's a photo of me wearing it at the famous Caffe Florian on St. Mark's Square (with a different outfit, also by Dark Garden):
I've been going to Carnival for the last two years, and it's given me plenty of inspiration and impetus for creating some over-the-top, historically-inspired hats. Cocked hats, like tricorns and this bicorn, are especially fun to make, because after blocking the crown of the hat I shape the brim entirely by hand. Although I still use blocks to create most of my hat shapes, I have ventured more into draping the shapes lately, which is essentially hand-sculpting. For more information about hat blocks and how hats are made, see this post.
But draping isn't just for historical hats, I also use the same technique to make simpler, more modern hats like the Maxima, which is available now on my Etsy shop in several colors, with additional colors (pink! and more) coming for Fall/Winter 2012.
