~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Making Wire Blocks -- Vintage Hat Making, Book 103-2 (WIDAS Millinery Course)
by Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

{softcover, 52 pages, 5.5x8.5, 2010, ISBN: 1936049457)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 Wire Blocks, originally published in 1923, will show you how to make wire hat blocks from beginning to end, including:

- selecting the wire
- wire dimensions
- applying edge wires
- applying extra support wires
- shaping support wires
- bracing the brim
- applying side to side and back-to-front wires
- reinforcing the brim
- applying diagonal support wires

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

- breton sailor/even rolled brim
- flat sailor brim
- rolled front brim
- flared brim
- combination brims
- wing brim
- duplex brim
- spiral brim
- dome crowns
- oval crowns
- apex crowns

Also included are instructions on how to copy a hat from a finished model or a picture of a hat. Detailed text and illustrations will give you a first hand education in wire block making as taught by the premier millinery school of the late teens and twenties.

(see more below)