Take basic sewing skills, add half a yard of fabric, and make one of 15 custom hats designed by an award-winning milliner. More than 250 illustrations guide you from drafting patterns to creating classic, head-turning hats. Start with a shirred beret, move on to a cloche, pillbox, or sailor hat.

Using beautiful full-color tutorials, Jenny Pfanenstiel teaches the basics of hat-making, from materials and fabric selection to stitching and finishing. All of the projects are scaled for difficulty so that readers can learn each of the highlighted skills while creating their own hats. Styles include cloche, fascinator, straw-brimmed, and other hats.

Whether a beret or brimmed, straw, felt, or cloth, a pillbox or cone-hats can define a time and place, be it on the street or on stage. In this practical workbook, Tim Dial takes readers through the process of design and construction of hats, using specific exercises to create basic kinds of headwear that can easily be adapted to different historic periods. Learn about measuring and patterning, using tools, and achieving apparently contradictory goals-hats that are theatrically appropriate, but also strong, durable, and efficient to build. Tim's book incorporates these special features essential to hat making: a modern-day perspective highlighting contemporary tools and skills clear instructions and safety notes for use in or out of the classroom progressive exercises that make it easy to explore and expand on techniques a focus on working with buckram, straw, and cloth-staples of the milliner's art plentiful high-quality photos that guide readers through each project. Take advantage of Tim's tips, techniques, and philosophies-some traditional, some familiar but improved, many totally new, all very doable. Then explore your own artistry.

Discover the world of hats with this collection of 25 projects from contemporary designers all over the world, each hand-selected for their freshly sewn flair and skilled millinery work.