Saturday 13 September 2008

Gothic Toque

I have a new gothic dress (brocade) and I wanted something on my head. Luckily I found a nice article on toques at Virtue Ventures. You can also see nice examples at Kats Hats, they just aren't open. These two ladies also call them torque or coffee hat.

According to virtue's instructions I used a quarter of circle as a pattern. I slightly edited the joining sides to fit my head and cut out of.. a carpet! The one without rubber below.
This piece I could use as a following template for drawing on brocade.

I cut two pieces and sewed them together. I watched to threads in the fibre to be in the same direction on the two parts. I turned this over and slipped it over the carpet. The threads go horizontally on the picture. That's probably why it wrinkled at the center (the sides were bias so they were a bit more flexible). I had to cut a few milimeters in the middle and it was better.

The white something under the pattern in the picture above is a future band that's worn around head. I took a rectangle, folded in the middle (I got a narrower one) and sewed two sides of it. This is before ironing and closing one side by hand sewing.
I sewed the ends of the carpet together, then the brocade in hand and pinned the parts of the hat together (the band to the rest + the band to a circle at the top).
And here you can see the lacing my dressmaker made on my new brocade robe. It seemed too sparse to mee.

She gave me some loops for me to finish it. I sewed them on according to her example. Two little stitches down and two up. This is a little trick, as they look like circles from the right side of the dress:-)

One side's done. For now. In fact, I wanted to have eyelets there as lacing (there's no space between when worn), but holes in this kind of fabric - it would fray out after a few days..

Of course I'll wear petticoat under when among people.
I won't torture you anymore with boring things and I'll show you the hat:-)