Swatch Service!

Putting together the wedding outfit of your dreams? Need some help getting everything coordinated for a together, polished look? Want to buy one of our hats online, but unsure which colors you like the most, or which will go best with a special outfit?

We can help with that. We offer a swatching service, available here through our Etsy store.

This service is especially helpful for customers who can't make it to our studio to see materials in person, but customers who come to the studio often go home with swatches as well. We have hundreds and hundreds of bolts of vintage veiling and ribbon, boxes and boxes of fabrics and feathers, and dozens of felts and straws to choose from. The swatching service allows you to have a bit of all this magic in hand as you think over your options.

Just give us an idea of the kind of hat you're going for and the colors you have in mind, and we'll send you a packet of swatches of hat materials to choose from (felt, ribbon, fabric, veiling, etc. etc.). Choose which ones you like best and use them to color match against the fabric of a special outfit, your wedding colors, or even your whole wardrobe. We're also happy to provide recommendations.

Here are just a few of the many customers who have used our swatches to help them choose.

Fiona ordered a custom wedding hat from the UK. The swatches she received allowed her to find the perfect taupe felt to match her dress, and the perfect ribbon colors for the cockade on the hat to match her other wedding colors (chocolate brown and turquoise).

 

Frequent customer Jo in Australia uses swatches regularly to help choose materials for her custom creations. By now, she's probably built up a small library of swatches!

Catherine Morse Brown (shown here at the races at Royal Ascot in the UK) and her husband Owen are the geniuses behind Guy Morse Brown Hat Blocks. They have several House of Nines Design hats, the materials for each one chosen from a set of swatches we sent them. The hat shown below was actually a surprise birthday gift for Catherine bought by Owen after he chose the materials for it from a swatch packet. So, you can use swatches for gift hats, as well.

The service costs $20, but that amount is credited toward your hat order if/when you place one, so if you buy a hat the swatch service ends up being free.

Any questions? Just let us know.

Custom Bridal: Elissa

I was very happy to have the opportunity to make this hat for a lovely bride recently. Her bridal outfit (which I hope to have photos of after the wedding!) was a 1890s-era style corset, jacket, and skirt made in black duchess satin with gray taffeta trim (all silk, of course), by Dark Garden Corsetry. I just love when the bridal couple wears color, and creates something really original and personal for their wedding day!

These are some quickie photos taken before sending the hat out the door. 

This is a 'Johnnie' style mini top hat, made in black long-nap fur felt.  As you can see, I've used the same gray silk taffeta from her dress to trim the hat and bind its edge.

The handmade flower was made using a heavy double-faced silk satin also used for the bride's jacket lining. The groom will wear a waistcoat in the same gorgeous blood red color. The peps chosen for the flower center, a shiny black, match the black patent leather buttons that decorate the bride's outfit.

 The hat also came with two sets of feathers (not pictured) that, when worn with the hat, mount behind the bow on its back. One set is a trio of curled black pheasant feathers, similar to the feathers seen on my 'Una' style. The other is two curled black peacock sword feathers, similar to the feathers on the 'Yvette'.

Look for more of the 'Johnnie' mini top hat in my new collection coming this fall!

Poptastic Bride and Draped Hats

A House of Nines Design hat was recently featured with a gorgeous custom wedding gown by Dark Garden Corsetry on the blog Poptastic Bride.

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.