1830's Bonnet

Ah, yes, the dreaded 1830's bonnets that I despise so much.  Well, at least they (somewhat!) cover the face!

Previous 1830's posts:
Introduction
1830's Shifts
1830's Petticoats
1830's Bustle

My main inspiration is this bonnet:

The green, brown, and cream elements just went so well with my dress fabric-I just went with a little more subdued green!

I looked for a pattern by Timely Tresses first, but they don't have their 1830's pattern out yet and I wasn't quite sure how long it would before it was out so I went ahead and purchased the Lynn McMaster's 1830's bonnet pattern.  This pattern actually ended up working really well-I had some concern over the pleats and shirring of the original bonnet as I have never worked with 1830's bonnets and the shapes are vastly different from 1850's and 1860's.  Messing with those shapes wouldn't be fun!  As it just so happened, the McMaster's pattern did a pleated cover and a shirred lining so all I did was switch them and do a little less shirring based on the original.

The first step, of course, was to find fabric.  I looked through Ebay and Etsy for a while but it is hard to match greens.  Then remembering that I had once dyed some silk ribbon in a similar color to what I was trying to match.  I found a remnant of that ribbon and it matched perfectly.  The ribbon had been dyed with Dharma's Acid Dye in the 'Moss Green' color.  A quick look through my dyes revealed there was nearly 2 oz. of the dye left in the container.  Whoo-hoo!  I went to Dharma's site to purchase some silk taffeta to dye only to discover they had since discontinued their silk taffeta.  Knowing that their dupioni is very clean with very few bumps and slubs, I got 3 yards of that.  My pattern only calls for 1.5 yards, however, I needed a yard or so for lining and Dharma only lets one order in full yards.  It ended up working perfectly, however, because I used the extra yard as ribbon fabric.

Low and behold as I was looking through my stash for a completely unrelated thing later that night, I found 3 yards of Dharma's dupioni silk.  Who knows where that came from!  I tried dying that but I added way too much dye and it ended up very, very dark army green which is not what I was going for.  I saved that for another project and waited for the new dupoini to get here.

While waiting for the fabric to arrive, the base had to be made.  Fortunately, I stock up on buckram so I had plenty left to make the base.  The pictures were taken before I realized I had left off the crinoline tape around the edges.  That has since been sewn on.  You can still see the shape, though.

I am quite pleased with the shape.  It may need a little pushing of the wire for the tip top to go in a bit, like the original.  Speaking of the original, I did have to change some things in the pattern to match.  First, the brim had to be cut down about an 1" at the top so it was a little lower.  I also cut off the cheek tabs as the original was straight across with very little curve.  Honestly, I should have pushed out the crown's lower bit closer to the brim as it would have given the brim a better shape.  But overall, it's not a halfway bad first try in 1830's millinery.

The pattern called for a thin cotton batting to cover the buckram which I've never seen mentioned in Timely Tresses patterns so I left it out.  Less work!  Then all I had to do was wait patiently until my fabric arrived to dye.  Fortunately, you cannot beat Dharma's shipping times.  I always go the cheapest route and it's never taken more than 2 days to get to me.

I went back and forth with the idea of doing a stove top dye or just throw it in the washing machine as the washing machine is what messed up the last bit of silk.  Typically when dying small batches, I do stove top so I went ahead with that.  I could watch it better and keep an eye on how dark it was getting.

Then it was just cutting the pattern out and starting to cover it.  The really nice thing about the original is that anywhere there is a seam, there's velvet ribbon covering it so you don't see any stitching when it is complete!  And then to decorate it.  Extra green fabric was used to make ribbons.  Most engravings and other bonnets had more than just ribbons adorning the bonnet and the Groce family raised Peacocks and other exotic fowl on Bernardo plantation so I felt that with the birds molting those beautiful feathers regularly, one might expect those feathers to be used somehow!

I am very pleased with how it turned out.  I can't wait to use it in 1830's events now!

Enjoy!