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Making Fabric Foundation Crowns -- Vintage Hat Making, Book 105-2 (WIDAS Millinery Course)
by Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

{softcover, 40 pages, 5.5x8.5, 2010, ISBN: 1936049449)

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The Woman’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences was a mail order correspondence school founded for the purpose of teaching sewing, cooking and millinery to women. The goal was to provide a skilled trade for women who wanted to earn wages or, for the home milliner, to offer an opportunity to hand make hats necessary for wearing in fashionable society without the expense of paying a milliner.

There are more than 40 books in the WIDAS millinery course. This course book, Making Fabric Foundation Crowns (NOTE: This book does make reference to Making Wire Blocks, another course book in this series, regarding covering wire frames), originally published in 1925, will show you how to make fabric crowns from beginning to end including:

- shaping crowns on wire blocks
- applying crown fabric layers
- varying the weight of a crown
- making an even cuff
- fitting the crown
- strengthening the crown

You'll learn how to make the following types of crowns:

- transparent oval crown
- cuff crown
- apex bell crown
- extra firm helmet crown
- light weight helmet crown
- bell crown
- soft tip, two piece crown
- dry-molded crown

Also included are instructions on how to shape crowns on blocks, alter a ready-made crown (increase size, decrease size, change the shape) and the most helpful -- how to make your own gummed paper block. Detailed text and illustrations will give you a first hand education in fabric foundation crown making as taught by the premier millinery school of the late teens and twenties.

(see more below)