Look at this little yellow cloche….It looks a bit odd, don´t you think?
All those creases and it´s rather stiff and the texture uneven!
Much more like a beginners hat, not a hat made by a more experienced milliner!
So what happened?
Last year I bought a lot of millinery items and hat bodies from another milliner. It seems, she wanted to work with the yellow hat bodie, stretched it over a block, starched it- And than obviously changed her mind. Afterwards she must have “crumpled” the hat bodie, and layed it aside.
When I got it, it was dry, stiff, more like a scrunched newspaper and not in the condition, a good and expensive hat bodie should have.
I tried to gently wash out the stiffener, but only succeeded in parts. I didn´t want to give up, so I stretched the wet hat bodie over a wooden block and patient worked on the shape. But there were some folds, I couldn´t remove anymore. And the hat bodie remained a bit starchy, so I didn´t use new stiffener. I did all I could, to make the hat as good as possible- But in fact the hat bodie was ruined by the rough treatment, it had before.
So please treat your working-items and materials right! If you work on a hat and find, you changed your mind, don´t throw it in a corner and let it rot.
Take it off the hat block, wash out the starch before it dries and than reshape it and let it softly dry on room temperature. then put it on another hat bodie or a hat stand. And use it as soon as possible….Or you end up with hats like THIS!!!!