Vintage inspirations

I've been having a look around the internet and in books recently at the styles of the lates 30's and early 40's. As the theme of my business is to recycle, upcycle or use of end of line items, I've got to wondering how women managed this in the war years. My Great Aunt and her friend used to tell me about recycling old children's jumpers and creating new ones by doing alot of Fairisle. I've also remembered how women were more likely to make their own clothers, including accessories - have heard many stories of how old things were updated for example. And with the colder months approaching I got to thinking about hats - what did these ladies wear on their heads? On my wanderings through the internet I found a fab post on another blog - Found in Mom's Basement - of a 1930's vintage style catalogue from Sears Dept Store. From this I started to look at ideas for the hats I liked and came up with this style board:

I then started to try out various crocheted shapes to get the crown of the hat right. I found that aiming for an oval wouldn't work - I prefer to use Crochet when working out a design from scratch as I find its much easier to structure and see an immediate result. Eventually I decided to start that hat off like a standard "beanine" - so that I could at least get the crown right. I then thought about shaping the hat using variable height stitches - so building from a dc to a htr to a tr as I came down the sides - this would help shape the hat and the brim. Once I was happy with the length, I started experimenting with the brim - this took quite a bit of getting right and I had to step back from my original idea of a medium sided brim with lace effect covering in a contrasting shade of blue to a sdmaller brim. Once I was satisfied with the brim size, I started wondering how to pull it up at the sides and get it to stay in shape - so after a few false starts I found that doing a contrasting row of dc sts around the brim using a smaller hook did the job perfectly.

Here is the result of my design process - have added a Rennie Mackintosh style hat "badge" which I crocheted with fine beading wire and contrasting seed beads.

 

I got really inspired with this hat and have actually completed a whole range of accessories in a similar style which I will share as the week goes on.

Now for a small feature for some of today's November Sparks, over at Folksy, based of course on the theme of HATS!:

This one is from Uniquely Yours

Another vintage feel from Eccentric Ella

And finally an offering from Nofkants Curios