Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The Straw Basket Bonnet: Version Two

A couple of years ago I split a small straw craft-store hat in half, lined it in cotton, and covered it with some wired gift-ribbon left over from Christmas celebrations, and tacked a row of pleated orange ribbon to the edge of the brim.  And did nothing else with it whatsoever except stick it in the back of my parents closet.


After the fiasco of the Halloween hat, this bonnet came to mind as a suitable vehicle for my orange roses - they're made of the same orange ribbon as the trim on this bonnet.
At Christmas I collected the bonnet from my parents place and last week, I buckled down and finished trimming it.

I had no more of the ribbon I'd used to cover the base, so to make the curtain - or whatever the technical term is for the fiddly bit at the back of the bonnet that kept Victorian ladies' necks modest - I went to Sckafs Fabrics in Indroopilly and found something that more or less matched.

I spent a little time playing and thinking up a design for the flowered trim:


To coordinate with my new bonnet, I dug into the stash and pulled out a much-loved and never-used remnant of sunset-colored rayon chiffon, and while I was still in my happy hemming place, hand rolled a hem around the edges for a matching shawl.


This is a historical piece and we're just going to pretend that synthetic dye technology was a few decades in advance of reality, okay?

I added a pair of orange ribbon ties:



And - voila! One entirely passable 1860's bonnet!  In technicolor.



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