help with millinery aka hat making

[Auryn]

Hello all
I hope someone here can help me.
and I hope this is the right section of the forum, if not I apologize and feel free to move it.
I am going to be attending my first pirate faire this november (st. pete pirate festival in florida).
I have decided that my character needs a conspicous red cavalier style hat.

I have the red felt I like (synthetic unfortunately as I havent been able to find real wool felt for less than about $15 a yard and I thought I should learn first before spending so much.
I have a foam head form measured to my size.

I have found only a couple of tutorials online
I was hoping someone here with experience could help me a bit.

I have already made one via the sewing method (3 pieces to form the hat), i was happy with it but not enough to keep using this method unless I have to.
I want to try and make it so that there are only two pieces, the head and the brim.  I found one tutorial where I have to soak the fabric in water with elmers glue, I will be trying this method next week, any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[jcbanner]

Other methods I've heard of involve steaming, or boiling the felt then stretching it over the form, but part of what makes that work is that heating the fibers with water will "full" the felt, but to my understanding, that doesn't work with synthetic, only with real wool.  Mythrin, are you reading this at all? you know more about wool and felt then I do.

[Auryn]

thanks jcbanner,
thanks kind of what I was afraid of.
Guess I will try my hand at it this weekend and see what happens.

[jcbanner]

I was thinking some more about this with how to get a nice form while stretching.  I havent heard much about stretching felt over a 3d form, but I have don a bit with leather over 3d forms.

You already have your form, but if you just pull the leather straight down on top of it, you won't have a flat rim that can be easily shaped.  but, if you take a board, or better yet, two boards, (thin plywood, Masonite, what ever works)  and cut a hole in the center of each to the shape of your form and a little bit bigger, you can sandwich the felt between them and pull down on that, the felt in the center of the boards will remain flat, and only the felt in the cut out area will be stretched over the form.

If you try this though, be sure to take a file or some sand paper and round off the cut edges. you don't want the felt to snag on the edges and wear through or tear.

I was digging through the forums, and found this: http://www.renaissancefestival.com/forums/index.php?topic=2652.0  it was a topic I had forgotten about talking about sources for finding hat blanks.  if your only doing one or two hats, it might be cheaper to consider buying a blank then to buy and assemble everything to make your own blanks.

of course, if your like me at all, making from complete scratch is more fun

[Auryn]

jcbanner
thanks so much
thats a great idea

I hadn't thought about making it in leather, thats not a bad idea either.
I will give that link you gave me a look.

I'll let you know how it goes