When I wrote “How to Sneak Your Wife’s Hat Size” for my blog in 2019, I had no idea it was going to be one of my most visited articles each holiday season year after year.
Here is an updated social media friendly version.
Gifting a Hat – Measuring for a Historically Accurate Fit
Holidays 2027
What sparks the “Holiday Season” for you?
For many years, it was preparing for Yuletide in the Country. We danced our way through night after night of rehearsal through October and November with festive songs ringing in the season. I absolutely loved the candle-lit romance of the event. The event consumed nearly three full months with Thursday night through Sunday performances for those of us who worked a full schedule.
When I stepped back from that heavy commitment, I discovered I love holiday bazaars! Be it a small society or church bazaar! Or, a huge Mouse Bazaar! I loved the creativity, the warmth, the joy, the festivity. One of my all-time favorites is ChrisKindle Market at Granger Homestead in Canandaigua, NY. This event is outside and inside at the same time, with giant party tents housing dozens, likely hundreds, of small merchant tents. It takes hours to wander the artisan and craftman tents. Inside the historic home, a Festival of Trees fills room after room with trees, wreaths, and arrangements decorated by local groups, organizations, and businesses.
This surge of creativity is what sparks the beginning of the Holiday Season for me.
My Etsy Shop this Holiday Season
I will Not be doing a focused Holiday Shop this year as I have in the past. I haven’t had the time to think up what to make, let alone make anything. I am sorry if anyone was looking forward to holiday dedicated items.
I will be making a few hats this season, starting with the hats I added to my shop yesterday. I will make a few more hats. I will try to balance styles across the eras. I will try to do both undecorated and decorated. I think it would be fun to do a holiday themed decorated hat. I may get around to making an extra something, maybe the Shaker style boxes or FanU style boxes or pockets.
My plan is to do a shop drop following Thanksgiving. 🤔 I have yet to decide if that will be Black Friday Morning or Small Business Saturday. I may be able to do another small shop drop on December 5th.
The last day I will ship physical items for 2026 will be December 10th. I do this for 2 reasons: I don’t want my work & your gifts crushed or lost in the holiday shipping rush, and I don’t want to add to the holiday shipping rush.
I will add to this post the items I add to my shop.
Please check back.
Percher style hat for the very late 1860s and 1870s. Yes, it is the style you may have seen in a particular wrap photo, just in natural straw. I trimmed it with a brown moire ribbon and an antique button.
1860’s style that can be worn into the early 1870s. a variation of Caroline’s hat in LHotP. I trimmed this hat with a brown moire ribbon and an antique mother–of-pearl buckle.
Tapered crown popular in the 1860s into the 1870s. This is the shape hat I made for Emily on LHotP. This version has black straw vining around the crown and brim.
Veil Reflections
This look at veils concentrates on the everyday veils of the mid-19th century, the 1840s through 1860s. It does not include mourning veils.
Through my three decades of reenacting and history interpretation, I often found the most useful solutions to problems in 19th-century settings were 19th-century solutions.
Cold at night? Use a soapstone for warmth.
Feet cold while I work? Put them up on a stool.
Need to keep my head warm? Wear a winter hood.
The same can be said for the use of veils.
My first personal experience that emphasized the importance of a veil came while riding on a train. For years, I rode this particular train. It was one I had ridden as a small child with my grandparents. This particular time there was significant difference: the return of the coal fed engine. The engineers, volunteers, and tourists alike were thrilled with the long plume of dark grey smoke bellowing out of the engine, streaming along the whole length of the cars behind.
I wore a lovely white drawn bonnet. By the end of the few hour ride, depite staying inside passenger cars, my white bonnet was speckled with grey and black. The bits of soot embedded in the fabric were impossible to remove. I also found plenty of soot on my face and clothing. The hems of my petticoats were coated with it, particularly the inside from touching the steps as I climbed in and out of the car.
Examining my once beautiful bonnet, I recalled the numerous passages emphasizing the importance of a traveling veil for women traveling by railroad. A traveling veil would have protected my face from the soot, or worse: These passages often also talked about how to remove burning embers from the eye. (I also learned never to wear a white bonnet to travel.)
Veils became more important to me as I became sun sensitive with the sun light triggering migraines that quickly ruined events. For many years, I could not go out, even to cross the village square, without either a sunbonnet or veil and parasol.
The two veils I wore most often were silk gauze. This is for two reasons. First, when we started exploring veils locally the silk gauze at Dharma was what we felt suitable. Our research has expanded and other materials are now available. Second, personally, I find the gauze helps with my light issues nicely. Please see my Veil Light Study to see what I found in regards to materials.
Veil Shapes
The most common shapes for veils included the wide rectangle and the semi-circle. In each shape, they tended to be wider than they are long, ranging approx from 30″to 40″ wide and 15 ” to 20″ long based on those I’ve been able to see in photos and in person.
Right above: A rectangular net veil, approx 36″ wide by 17″ deep. Right below: A semi-circular veil. I need to double check the dimensions, as I am pretty sure I bought this one but haven’t a clue where I put it.
There were some variations to these shapes. This example at the MET may be mid-century. It is a variation on a rectangle with the top and bottom edges curving. There is a shape I would call a petal, with two sides each an arc. At the bottom of the page, you will see a quasi-triangle shaped veil meant for windy weather.
Be sure to browse your favorite and local museums to see original veils.
Veil Materials
Let me first say lace is not well versed in lace. I will leave the details of which lace is which and which is correct to those who have studied lace in depth. That said. In minimum:
In terms of fibers, silk, linen, wool and cotton all come up for nineteenth century shawls in museum collections.
When looking at the net ground of net or net lace, you want little hexagons. You do not want the little rectangles or diamonds.
Veil Colors
The most commonly found veil colors for the century are black, white and ivory. We can also find blues and greens. These do tend to appear more frequently in earlier remaining veils then in those of the 40s, 50s and 60s.
To the left is an image of me in an 1820s bonnet with a green veil. This is a dyed silk gauze veil made by Bevin Lynn. I found this green to be gentle on the eyes when out in the sun, given moderate protection. It did not give glare as some white veils can do. It did play with the light giving a streaked color effect similar to what some migraines can produce.
I have also worn white and black veils. I find black silk gauze to give the most protection from the sun. It also gives the most vision dampening of the colors I’ve worn. White give some light protection. I prefer it on moderately sunny day for short walks across the tree filled square.
Attaching a Veil
This is how I attach my veil. Original veils show either a channel at the top of the veil or worked holes, through which a thin cord or ribbon can be drawn. In my veils, I prefer to put a small knot or loop in the end. This helps keep the cord from sliding back through and makes it easy to grab.
Once this cord/ribbon is drawn up, the veil can be positioned along the brim edge. I drape the veil over the back of the bonnet.
I prefer to pin just back from the edge. With my drawn bonnet, seen here, I pin under the second cane. On my straw bonnets, I pin a row behind the fancy plait or about the 3rd row back. The end pins are pinned upward sorta following the row of cane or plait. In the center top, I pin one or two pins across the veil, trying to catch the cord, parallel to the cane or plait. (pinning perpendicular to the plait will allow the veil to pull forward or backward as it drapes.) Here you can see how this veil drapes forward and back. This is a silk gauze veil made for me by Bevin. It is trimmed in silk ribbon. It is a little longer than most 1860s veils. Some 1850s images do show a similar length.
Here Betsy Connolly is wearing a semi-circular veil. Notice how she doesn’t have the ends pooling on either side as a rectangular veil would.
Specialty Veils
Announcing: Lappet Style Doll Hood Pattern!!!
After what has felt like a mess of delays, I am relieved to finally share my Lappet Style Doll Hood Pattern is now available.
The lappet style hood looks amazing in doll size!
With the brim folded back, the quilted lining frames the face. With the brim folded forward, the brim shields the face from the elements.
If you missed it, I upgraded the human size Lappet Winter Hood Pattern to a full Lappet Style Hood Workbook!
Announcing: Lappet Style Hood Workbook!
I am excited to announce the release of my new Lappet Style Hood Workbook!
In the past ten years, since its initial publication, my Lappet Style Winter Hood Pattern has been one of the most popular of my patterns.
This style hood is so lovely, it deserved a full workbook.
Now, you can see the details of an assortment of original lappet style hoods from my collection, ranging from light fall warmth to deep cold protection, from an economically pieced practical hood to an ingenious style mash-up with ultimate warmth in mind.
And, of course, directions for making your own hood.
The directions section is like a choose-your-own-adventure as it is filled with options to create your own lappet hood using historically accurate techniques.
Bonus: This workbook’s pattern pieces have 2 different printing options. I formatted them on 8.5″×11″ for printing at home and on 18″×24″.
The doll version of this hood will be coming soon-ish.
Mourning Publisher
It seems odd to say I am mourning the loss of a computer program. But, with Microsoft eliminating Publisher at the end of September, I find I am. More so, I am mourning the loss of my work.
I am mourning the loss of decades of work forever frozen in PDF or in files that can not be opened. Hundreds, thousands of hours of writing and re-writing, layout, editing, cropping and fine-tuning
Frustration
Tears
Dried out contacts
Missed meals
and finally, Joy or even Glee upon completing a publication.
I estimate 70 to 80 percent of my work is in Publisher. Prior to recent years as spreadsheets have dominated my “day job” life, that number was much higher. For a little more than a quarter century, I have used Publisher to create workshop handouts, patterns, templates, little pamphlets, holiday freebies, e-books, and full workbooks.
For each publication, I have bits and pieces of thought, layers of process to get from an idea, a vision to come together into something presentable. The space around a Publisher page filled with fragments – photos, illustrations, passages that belong somewhere. Often five versions of a title waiting for me to decide which I like. That vast gray space acted as a worktable and an extension of my brain at the same time.
While I mourn the loss of my thought process for completed materials, I mourn my incomplete projects more. I have countless projects laid out in Publisher, incomplete spread across pages waiting for me to find the time to return to fill in the rest. Among them:
- Children’s Quilted Winter Hoods (This is a skeleton half formed)
- Pieced & Patchwork Pockets (A publication I planned for this summer)
- An Ongoing Study in Winter Hoods (A comprehensive volume on my work with winter hoods)
- A publication on dolls used in sewing accessories
- The 1840-1850s straw bonnet workbook
- The 1880s capote bonnet workbook
I’ve been trying to save what I can. But, the reality is these materials saved as PDFs or page jpgs might as well be lost because they are not longer in a format that can be easily pieced back together. Quality is lost. The skeleton of the project is lost.
Each will need to be started again from scratch… after I choose, pay for, and learn a new platform/program.
In the end, losing Publisher and not being able to easily open decades of my work feels much like moth-balling a program, be it the end of a literacy program, or a summer camp. I am sad. I feel loss. I mourn.
Retiring: Lappet Style Hood Pattern
I am retiring my 2016 Lappet Style Hood Pattern soon.
This winter hood pattern has been a favorite for years. But, after a decade, it deserves an update!
I am currently working on writing a new Lappet Style Hood Workbook!
This workbook will follow the format of my other winter hood workbooks, beginning with a discussion the style and a detailed look at extant hoods in my collection. Then, it will walk you though making your own hood with historically accurate construction and techniques.
Plus….. I am also writing a doll version! I have yet to decide if this will technically be a pattern or a workbook. I can say I have already drafted pattern pieces for 2 porcelain sizes!
My hard deadline is the end of September because that is when I lose access to Publisher, the platform I use. (After that, all other publications, including Patchwork Pockets, are on hold until I can select and purchase a new platform.)
My plan is to retire the 2016 pattern before the workbook release. This way, no one unknowingly buys the pattern version right before the workbook release.
If, for some reason, you really want the original pattern version, please buy it soon. It is currently $7.80 with my Back-To-School sale.
“How much did a bonnet cost?”
This is one of the hardest questions to answer.
Why?
Because there is no single, easy answer.
Ideally, I would have a big pool of billheads(receipts), an assortment of ledgers from many different milliners, and a few dozen diary entries to create a database of prices based on year, region, area, time of year, type of piece, etc..
Then, I would feel like I had a hint of an answer.
But, I don’t have that. I don’t think anyone has that.
Bonnets varied in materials. Even when looking at straw bonnets, there was a vast variety of quality. Then came trims. The ribbons, feathers, flowers, bobbinette, lace, etc all varied in price. Year, season, and location were all factors.
For years, I saved every 19th century bill/receipt that came up for sale. I have purchased several within a particular focus and my budget. I have a collection of wholesale billheads for every purchase a smaller milliner made for a year.
Even with this slowly developing pool, it is impossible to answer “a bonnet cost __this___ much.”
A single billhead can show the price of items from particular stores in a particular region in a particular year. When billheads are gathered together, for a milliner, for a region, for a year, a picture begins to develop.
Sometimes (a rare accurace) a single billhead can give us a little more. This bill from 1849 lists several items purchased.
One trimmed bonnet cost $4.50 in May. A pink silk bonnet cost $3.50 in December. Two bonnets and trimmings “last spring” cost $6.35. (This bill also tells us the products and services this shop in Springfield provides, the frequency in which this family of an unknown number of women purchases bonnets, and the delay in payment from “last spring” to April, 1849 for this bill to January, 1850 for the payment.)
….
Diary entries like these from Caroline Richards of Canandaigua, NY give us a look at the prices she paid for her millinery:
Wednesday, 1854 – Ann Eliza is going down street with us this afternoon to buy us some new summer bonnets;. They are to be trimmed with blue and white and are to come to five dollars. We are going to Mr Stannard’s store also, to buy us some stockings.
April 12, 1856 — We went down town this morning and bought us some shaker bonnets; to wear to school. They cost $1 apiece and we got some green silk for capes to put on them. We fixed them ourselves and wore them to school and some of the girls liked them and some did not, but it makes no difference to me what they like, for I shall wear mine till it is worn out. …
Saturday, 1854 – We got our new summer hats; from Mrs Freshour’s millinery and we wore them over to show to Aunt Ann and she said they were the very handsomest bonnets she had seen this year.
If I have to give a price, I can give a window for the mid century of as low as $1 for Shaker bonnets for school to $4.50 for a decorated silk bonnet. But, my answer has holes in that these examples span two different geographic regions and come from two different size cities.
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Straw’s Amazing Durability
This hat had quite the July adventure.
I finished this hat just barely in time for the release of Little House on the Prairie. I shipped it on July 6th, thinking it would arrive July 8th, in time for the owner to have it in the 9th.
It seemed to be moving as expected, arriving in the destination state’s distribution center the morning of the 8th. Then it just stopped. For the next 3 weeks, there was no movement on tracking.
Nothing.
This morning, while dropping off other packages, my Post Master had a very sad looking box for me. Somehow, the shipping/postage sticker printed at the PO fell off at some point.
I had purposefully switched from Priority Mail boxes to these brown cardboard boxes for many if my hats & bonnets because I had issues with the free PO boxes getting damaged, particularly in one region. This was the first time I had one of these brown boxes get damaged like this.
I surmise a heavy box, or multiple heavy boxes were placed on top of this box, crushing nearly directly down.
Seeing how crushed the box was, I was hesitant yet still hopeful.
I opened the box right at the Post Office, just in case. I was pleased to see the straw hat inside withstood the box being crushed around it.
No straw was broken.
No stitches were broken.
There was minimal misshaping, all of which could be fixed with re-blocking. Re-blocking happens to be a common practice in the 19th-century.
The front right of the brim pushed down, creating a small concave.
The whole brim flattened bit. I suspect the box was crushed somewhere where it was humid, which allowed the straw to soften while crushed.
All in all, I am glad the hat wasn’t completely lost or destroyed. This goes to show just how durable well-made straw hats can be.
