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Vintage Millinery -- A Workroom Textbook for Making Hats
by Hester Lyon

{softcover, 200 pages, 6x9, 2012, ISBN: 1936049902}

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Originally published in 1922, this book contains complete instructions for preparing, making and copying framed hats as practiced by the most advanced millinery work rooms in the 1920s and used by the leading creative  artists of France and America to develop ideas and create new hat designs. Because millinery styles change rapidly, the author wrote this book to  present the principles and process of millinery design so that  readers/students following the lessons at home, school or in the  workroom would be able to take these principles and apply them to new styles/designs as fashions changed. The principles can be applied to all types of  hats because it teaches the underlying rules of millinery design, lesson by lesson.

Below are the book's main topics -- please see table of contents image for full course outline:

- fundamentals of frame making
- lists of materials to use
- how to measure the head
- cutting wires and wrapping with space proportionate accuracy
- bracing wire frames
- covering hat frames
- covering and attaching the crown
- facing underbrims
- working with velvet
- putting on facing
- applying the flange
- flanges and sectional facings
- bindings
- milliner folds
- making transparent hats

Specific instructions for making mushroom, turban and lace hat frames are shown in the book as well as working with straw (straw sewing and shaping around frame). This book also includes instructions on how to copy hats by taking them apart and copying the wire structure and materials used to create the hat (fabric, embellishments, etc.), calculating materials, and building your own hat frame.

(see more below)