Millinery Hat Making and Design - Novelty Trimmings

By Read Books Ltd.

The ‘Millinery Hat Making and Design’ texts offer insights into the different elements of the practice of millinery – the design, manufacture and sale of hats. ‘Novelty Trimmings’ is a detailed guide to the handmade ornaments traditionally used in millinery practice. Well-illustrated, it also contains a set of examination questions at the end for the avid millinery student. Contents of this volume include: Hand-Made Novelties - Flowers and Fruit - Bands and Rosettes - Wings and Quills - Buckles and Beads - Cabochons - Ornaments - Embroidered Novelties - Novelty Trimmings. This vintage text is being republished in a high quality, affordable edition, complete with a new introduction and reproductions of the illustrations and diagrams featured in the original.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Jan 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781447483274

Book preview

Questions

NOVELTY TRIMMINGS

HAND-MADE NOVELTIES

INTRODUCTION

1. Materials Used for Trimmings.—One of the most interesting facts concerning millinery is that almost every manufactured material can be made up into garnitures for women’s hats and used in one locality or another. Practically every part of the globe has yielded its quota of articles for the adornment of the head-wear of the fashionable woman. All the familiar metals are used to a greater or less extent; feathers from birds and fowls are extensively employed; natural grasses and weeds from land and sea are made to serve as trimmings; natural butterflies are used, after they have been specially treated; furs of the same kinds as are used-for dresses and wraps are also made up into garnitures; wood fiber is turned to account in various ways; glass is manufactured into beads and spun into a variety of shapes; the petals of natural flowers are mashed to a pulp, mixed with other materials, pressed into balls, and strung on threads, so that they may easily be draped around hats; small branches or twigs of trees are varnished, mounted with artificial flowers and foliage, and used as garnitures; thorns and pussy willows are utilized in a similar manner; silk, satin, velvet, flannel, Turkish toweling, lace, celluloid, buttons, beads, porcelain flowers and countless other materials enter into the construction of millinery ornaments and novelties.

2. Substitutes for Desired Materials.—Although manufacturers of millinery all over the world are constantly creating and producing things that are new and out of the ordinary, it is not always possible to select and purchase that which is most appropriate. For instance, in planning a hat, it may be decided that a flower of a certain shade of velvet is just the thing to give the desired tone and class; but if the market is distant and difficulty is experienced in securing just what is wanted, then it is always advisable to use some material that can be secured, and endeavor to convert it into a flower or ornament that will prove a good substitute for that which was at first desired. There is no reason for leaving the hat untrimmed and unfinished simply because it is impossible to buy exactly what was wanted. It is always possible to use some other material, and, with the addition of careful and painstaking labor, turn it into a substitute that will answer the purpose. Instances are known of ladies’ hats that have been trimmed with neck chains, bracelets, and gentlemen’s four-in-hand neckties. The thing to observe in using for millinery trimming an article of wearing apparel is to change it so that it will become a millinery garniture and not be recognized in the original form for which it was intended. It will be found in this Section that malines are used as substitutes for quills, aigrettes, and balls, while piece silks, velvet, and many other materials are made up in imitation of almost everything produced by nature.

FLOWERS AND FRUIT

FIG. 1

3. Velvet Wild Rose.—The wild rose shown in Fig. 1 (a) consists of four velvet petals like that shown in (b), and a bunch of white stamens. The petals are alike and are cut according to a paper pattern that is made as follows: Take a piece of tissue paper of sufficient size and fold it once across the middle. Lay this folded edge along the line a b, Fig. 2, and with a pencil trace the heavy outline on the upper surface of the paper. Then, with the scissors, cut through both thicknesses of tissue paper, following the traced line. The resulting piece, when unfolded, will be the pattern for the petals and will have the shape shown in Fig. 1 (b). From a piece of velvet cut four petals, using the tissue-paper pattern, and on the back of each petal paste two pieces of lace wire in the positions indicated by the dotted lines. These wires should be pasted fast with milliner’s glue and their ends should extend about 1 in. beyond the small end of the petal, as shown.

4. After the glue has dried, the petals are ready to be bent into form and made up into the flower. The