Aimée is working on the hat. We have decided that the hat consists of three layers: a truncated henin, a veil, and a transparent cap.
We are still working on our options for the veil. The picture has it in silk chiffon. We are also trying out a silver silk with a stiffer hand. The cap, as far as it has gotten, can be seen on the right in silk organza. The super-fine starched linen that the original was made out of is no longer available. See the previous post on the fabric.
Lovely!
Looking good! It’s so hard to figure out what is going on with the head coverings in such a small image.
Am very interested on this hat, how the pieces are put together to create the full hat. Am I correct in that they stay as separate pieces, or are they sewn/tacked together?
We aren’t sure yet. Hat is still in progress. It is definitely being made in three pieces that will probably be pinned together. We have also switched to using silk illusion as the cap fabric as even the organza wasn’t transparent enough to match the picture.
I can report my own work with Hennins some years back: it is all done with pins and a stable hair-do. I had very good luck with a pointed hennin where I used the black velvet lappets you see on so many as a head wrap, laid on my hair so that the knap of the velvet would be catching on my hair rather than sliding off. I pinned it very tightly to my head velvet side down and the front way down over my eyes (with hair in a bun at the right place). I then pinned the edges of the fabric on the hennin to the taught velvet and folded the velvet up from over my eyes to cover the edge of the hennin. I added a couple pins to hold the edge of the velvet to the hennin, and sort of rolled the lappets in to the correct shape down my back. It took maybe 8 regular sewing pins (small heads so they would not show) to get it to stay on all day if I moved in a ladylike manner.
I believe Aimee is sewing in a hair comb that I can shove into a braid or knot on my head.