Back in May or so, Nehelenia Patterns had a pre-order for an 1800-1830s straw bonnet. I've been wanting a straw bonnet for my Regency wardrobe for a while so I jumped on it (and regretted it a bit when I saw the cost for international shipping, but oh well).
It arrived at the very beginning of July and I was eager to decorate it! I had already bought ribbon to use on it and used that ribbon to make ribbon bodices inspired by a fashion plate I had seen.
Before I decorated it, though, I went searching for period inspiration. I found a small sampling of bonnets that may or may not be straw from 1798-1806, which lines up nicely with my existing Regency wardrobe!
Lining
First things first, though. Hair and straw hats don't get along well, so I'm putting a lining on the inside of the crown. Historically, this problem might have been solved by wearing a cap underneath the bonnet, but a) I can't see any evidence of caps in the fashion plates I'm looking at and b) I don't have a cap.
I'm using scrap pieces of unbleached muslin for my lining, but I would have liked to use linen or a nicer white cotton. I'm also considering coming back in the future to add a ruffle of fine white cotton around the edge of the crown to give the illusion of a cap. But that's not on today's agenda.
To draft the lining, I simply cut out a circle slightly wider than the very top of the crown and a rectangle tall enough to reach from the top to the bottom of the crown and long enough to go all the way around.
First, I seamed up the short edges of the rectangle. One side of the resulting cylinder was then roughly gathered down to be seamed to the circle. (The brim edge of the crown was wider than the top edge of the crown, hence the gathering.) The raw edges of the fabric will be hidden between the lining and the straw, so I didn't worry about finishing them.
With the lining constructed, I carefully fit it into the bonnet and folded in the un-seamed edge. Then I used a curved millinery needle to carefully attach the lining to the bonnet. My goal was to slide the needle between pieces of straw (not go through to the outside of the bonnet) but found it easier in most places to stick the needle right through pieces of straw. I did break a few pieces of straw, unfortunately, but nothing catastrophic.
Decorating
Then it was on to decorating! I was originally intending to make two ribbon decorations that would be easily interchangeable, but I wasn't sure how I was going to do that. Then, as I was compiling the gallery above, I noticed that 8 of the 11 fashion plates showed the (presumably) straw bonnet decorated with blue ribbon! It just so happened that blue was one of the colors I had intended to use, so I decided to just do a blue decoration.
After looking at the fashion plates some more and pinning the ribbon on my bonnet to see how it looked, I opted for a simple design. One piece of ribbon forms a band around the crown of the bonnet and two pieces of ribbon descend from the ends of the brim to tie the bonnet in place. It would have been perfectly historically accurate to have them tie under the chin, but I decided to make the ribbons slightly uneven to tie at the side, closer to the bonnet. This is also historically accurate, as can be seen in some of the above fashion plates and other plates of non-straw bonnets.
I pinned the ribbon band in place on the bonnet and chose a few select places to tack the ribbon to the bonnet, starting with the center front, and two places more to the side. I took a quick moment to attach the ribbon ties to the band when I reached that point, then tacked both sides of the ties to the bonnet. I then overlapped the ends of the ribbon band near the center back, hid the raw edges, and used my tinniest whip stitches to connect the ends.
As a finishing touch, I stuck a faux ostrich feather (which I'd borrowed from my other bonnet), into the ribbon near one tie and clipped the ends of the ties to have the classic 'swallow-tail' shape.
Final Thoughts
Just like that, my bonnet was done! The whole process was a morning's work - maybe three or four hours. Certainly less time than making a bonnet from scratch, and no less rewarding. I really love how it turned out! The blue ribbon compliments the yellow tones of the straw stunningly, and I think the feather really pulls the whole thing together.
Stay warm. Stay safe. Stay dry.
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