Millinery: Five Hats in One Day: Brown

*There is an update on this post at the end...

Waaayyyyy last summer I sent away for this peculiar looking hat block from Hatshapers.

It is actually a block shape used to create the hats in a famous movie that featured a girls school, where all the girls wore this shape hat in light blue. Does anyone out there recognize the hat shape and can name the movie? (*Hint: The movie has a sequel out.)

While the Hatshapers website states emphatically that their product can not successfully be used to block felt or straw, I beg to differ.
It just takes a little ingenuity, instead of push pins, to get the hood to stay stretched on the block.

I'm sure by now everyone reading this blog understands these are the hoods that I used on the day I blocked five hats at once.
This is how the brown one turned out.

The secret to using this block was self clinging tape. It is a plastic tape that when stretched, clings to itself without any adhesive. I used it to hold the straw to the block and also to hold the concave curves in the back tight. I just folded the edge under, and I did need to to make a secondary fold between the crown and the brim.

Here's the finished hat...with the back brim up as in the movie. I had forgotten about that part until I went to post this! I had to go grab the hat, steam a bit, and shoot another picture.
Maybe you will like it better the way it was before:

The secondary fold was actually rather nice and sculptural; I wouldn't have minded just leaving it, but I wanted to use some vintage veiling that I got awhile ago. The veiling has shiny gold pallets, and the veiling has tiny six sided honey comb-like openings.

The dragonfly is one of my favorite creatures. I sometimes think I like them even better than butterflies during the summer months. There are lots of them by our lake right now, and they seem to enjoy zooming along beside me while I take my walks.
They come in lots of colors, and their gossamer wings always make me think of fairies. Or maybe even fire lizards, from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonrider series.

But I also like dragonflies because they eat baby mosquito. The first hat I made with a dragonfly on it (an olive green silk teardrop shaped pill box, with cream roses and peacock swords) I named "Tribute to West Nile Virus" because of the dragonfly's work in containing the mosquito population that spreads the WNV.

Let me know what you think: back down, like this, or back up like in the first shot
Since the netting is tacked down, it won't be used as mosquito netting. That would have made for an interesting option though.

I had to make three small pleats in the straw to take up the fullness under the peak. I think it wound up being a nice decorative design element.

But if this mosquito season doesn't get better, I may be tempted to take out those tacks!

May hats and dragonflies happily surround you this summer!

*Update: My fellow librarian Olia looked up the Beauxbaton girl's school offical hat. The girls wore the hat with the peak going sideways like in this image:
I'll be posting pictures of myself in all five hats...and promise to wear this hat the proper way!