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I've been wanting to return to top hats. Don't get me wrong, my elaborate hair flowers and enormous brimmed hats will stay in rotation for whenever I Leave The House (which, tbh, is not that often), but I have been CRAVING top hats again.
So I pulled an antique one from my collection and tried to figure out why I rarely wore it. Oh, because the brim is completely flat, not slightly curled on the sides. I knew I shouldn't use steam to reshape it (the go-to way for reshaping wool, straw, and "paper straw" hats), because the varnish used as the stiffener for it would probably just melt and not dry properly. (Plus steaming hats is a pain, sometimes quite literally.)
After a lot of googling, I discovered a post hidden away in some sort of hipster dude fedora & general hat forum, detailing one guy's experiment with using alcohol to make the varnish and buckram pliable enough to reshape the brim. He said it worked, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and try it myself.
After thoroughly dousing the undersides of the brim, I started gently pressing the sides up. After I got the curve I wanted, I wrapped layers of rubber bands around the entire hat to hold the curve in place, then left the whole thing to dry.
It worked, and the hat looks pristine! And then I spent an evening making decor to pin onto it, because I don't sew anything onto antique top hats. (People :: cough generally lazy steampunk costumers cough :: who glue things on to antique top hats should have all their crafting supplies confiscated.)
Behold my fancy "new" hat!
So I pulled an antique one from my collection and tried to figure out why I rarely wore it. Oh, because the brim is completely flat, not slightly curled on the sides. I knew I shouldn't use steam to reshape it (the go-to way for reshaping wool, straw, and "paper straw" hats), because the varnish used as the stiffener for it would probably just melt and not dry properly. (Plus steaming hats is a pain, sometimes quite literally.)
After a lot of googling, I discovered a post hidden away in some sort of hipster dude fedora & general hat forum, detailing one guy's experiment with using alcohol to make the varnish and buckram pliable enough to reshape the brim. He said it worked, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and try it myself.
After thoroughly dousing the undersides of the brim, I started gently pressing the sides up. After I got the curve I wanted, I wrapped layers of rubber bands around the entire hat to hold the curve in place, then left the whole thing to dry.
It worked, and the hat looks pristine! And then I spent an evening making decor to pin onto it, because I don't sew anything onto antique top hats. (People :: cough generally lazy steampunk costumers cough :: who glue things on to antique top hats should have all their crafting supplies confiscated.)
Behold my fancy "new" hat!
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Nicely done, regardless!! That is very very cool!
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