St Florian hats

St Florian Hat 1 at Rowany Festival. Photo by Rache Vess.

Late last year I made some hats for the upcoming B&B of St Florian. The hats needed to be appropriate to their German garb and tie into the St Florian device which is a purple buttony cross on a white background.

For these hats I used a heavy black wool which was a little too stiff for a coat. Their expect-ellencies supplied me with some purple and white satin material which they were going to use on other aspects of the garb as well. I used halloween witches hats to provide rigidity to the brim.

This project suffers from the same problem my cranach hat did, where black wool is very hard to photograph well so instructions but no step by step photos are below the cut.

Hat 1 (square) how to:

• Place wool on table with circle of wire.
• Trace around wire and remove.
• Allow 2cm around outside for hem and cut (i.e. diameter of woolen circle is 4cm wider than diameter of witches hat brim).
• Cut square a minimum of equal to diameter of hat. The larger the square the more 'room' in the crown.
• Lay fabric on top of each other and cut oval shape for crown of head ensuring that it's shrunk by 1cm for seam allowance.
• Sew square and circle together at crown.
• Fold back and sew again, essentially hiding/ oversewing the original seam. This prevents the seam from showing on the outside when the crown is tucked up and from framing the face on the inside.
• If required, add cotton tape as bias around the edge. This will grip hair as well as wool but won't scratch the skin. If you plan on wearing the hat often, it'll be a replaceable sweat band.
• Determine where the cut outs are by folding the corners of the square into the middle. Cutouts should not exceed the a triangle 1/8th of the larger square. Cutout shapes, in this case ermines and baste patches of white satin over it. You should have a circle, then square then satin.
• Pin circle to square out of the way, you may need to fold the circle edges slightly. This is part is 'square right side'
• Use piping and purple satin to cover inside of square (opposite side to the white satin basting i.e. satin, circle, square). The geometry with be annoying but once done you can pull the hat through the crown to get back to right side.
• Sew the corners of the brim together (maybe with a button) to create a smaller square the top of the hat.
• If you wish to make the center sort of puffy, or the corners of your square don't quite reach the brim, tuck them under and tack them down. They'll provide an anchor point for feathers and raise the top of the hat slightly.
• Add feathers, Done!

Hat 2 is based on a woodcut from 1510-1544. The focal object is a Landsknecht brandishing a pole. He has a rather lovely uniform and wears a star fish hat. Interestingly, the hat appears to have 5 splits rather than the typical 4. As I was quite taken with how it looked I decided to copy the crown for the second St Florian hat.

Detail - Landsknecht brandishing a pole. British Museum item no. 1845,0809.1715

Hat 2 (pentagon):

• Place wool on ground with circle of wire.
• Trace around wire and remove.
• Allow 2cm around outside for hem and cut (i.e. diameter of woolen circle is 4cm wider than diameter of witches hat brim).
• Cut pentagon (or circle) 1.5x diameter of circle.
• Cut out buttony cross and baste down purple satin on 'wrong side'.
• Cutout oval for crown in circle piece, ensuring it's shrunk by seam allowance.
• Cut pentagon into 5 strips.
• From 1/2 radius, taper strips to be 1/5th of the crown circumference (add seam allowance  for hem as well).
• Hem each strip.
• Sew strips to circle crown hole.
• Fold and sew down to hide seams.
• Cut white satin circle 2x diameter of hat. Gather and hand sew into crown.
• Alternatively, cut strips of white satin and sew into hat gaps, gathering at top and base.
• Add feathers, done!

If I were to make this hat again, I'd use hexagon shaped strips (elongated base of hex) and have the center motif as a separate piece which overlaps the join of the hexagons. It'd probably save a lot of  fiddly geometry.