By the time I reached my teenage years in the late 1950s and early1960s, hats were doomed. We didn t know that yet because theelegant and fashionable Jackie Kennedy had made pillbox hats sofashionable they were firmly on the heads of American women. EvenBob Dylan noticed and wrote a song about it Leopard SkinPillbox Hat. Ladies who lunched or attended afternoon club meetings still worewoven straw and artificial flower and feather fantasy hats wheneverthey went off to their appointed social rounds.
Journalist MayCraig, a fixture at White House press conferences; Hedda Hopper andLouella Parsons, the Hollywood gossip columnists; Elizabeth, Queenof England; and even Maine s very own Sen. Margaret Chase Smith,all served as high-profile hat-wearing role models. The women in my family, both maternal and paternal, possessing astreak of independence of uncommon wideness and durability, did notalways follow the dictates of the hat czars. But if the occasionhad sufficient gravity a funeral or a wedding they did,indeed, wear hats, borrowing from one another or nabbing one for 10cents at a church rummage sale. At one point during the waning of the hat years, my mother enrolledin a correspondence course in hat making perhaps the Academy ofMillinery Design in Little Falls, N.J., as advertised in McCall sNeedlework and Crafts magazine of that era.
Every so often she dreceive in the mail a box containing a hat devoid of decoration.The box also held a lesson, ribbon, feathers, flowers or veilingwith which to decorate the naked hat. While I was at school, mymother sat at the kitchen table and worked on her millinerycreation. When I came home, I served as her model, standingpatiently while she fussed with a bow or adjusted the angle of thebrim. After a few weeks, my mother declared she just didn t havethe patience to make hats and canceled the course.
After that, sheliked to say she was a correspondence school dropout. That was a few years before the women s liberation movement erasedthe cultural expectation that a woman was not properly dressed and no lady unless she wore a hat. Recently, as I was trolling through a stash of family photographs,I came across pictures of my grandmother Beulah Leavitt Herrick, mymother, Ruth Herrick Hamlin, and myself wearing hats, each of usreflecting the fashion of our times. Beulah s hat is very much in the Gibson Girl tradition of thefirst decade of the 1900s. Her hat is woven of straw with ascalloped brim and rides elegantly atop her pompadour hairdo.
It isdecorated with an opulent cluster of silk roses. I like to imagineshe was wearing that fetching hat when she first was introduced tomy grandfather. In another photo a few years later, she is wearinga wool plaid cap as she stands by an enclosure and tends sheep. Ruth acquired her hat in 1940, several months after she and myfather were married. It resembles an upside-down bowl with a turnedup brim and is made of wool felt.
It sits to the side of her headand is held in place by a chin strap, echoing the shoe strapsfastened across her ankles. The hat matches her suit, a fittedjacket and slim skirt. She also is carrying a bag and gloves tomatch her shoes. I am wearing a hat of white felt with a deep crown. It has a turnedup brim and is trimmed with a wide band of gold grosgrain ribbon.
Ibought it in 1966 at Zayre department store in Portland and wore itto church that Easter. But by the 1970s, the only thing I ever wore on my head was abandana tied around my long hair or a knit wool cap to ward off thecold. The hats I wear these days protect me from the sun, a strictlyutilitarian and not decorative use, but I always jazz up them witha bit of ribbon, a flower or a feather. Snippets Artist Karen Gelardi will show how to make a scatter rug using asimple knotting technique 5-8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept.
26, at SPACEGallery, 538 Congress St. in Portland. Bring one yard each of threeor more fabrics and scissors. A rug making demonstration willprecede the hands-on workshop. Tickets are $5.
The workshop is opento all ages. For information, call 828-5600. Silver Willow Gallery in Winterport is forming a beading (and othercrafts) bee. The first meeting will convene 5-8 p.m. Thursday,Sept.
13, at the gallery, 115 Main St. The bee, said coordinatorSue Berryhill, will be a social gathering where people may work ontheir current crafts projects, including beading, crochet, knittingand embroidery, and give and receive help as needed. The bee isfree to attend. Bring a portable chair. For information, call the223-1075 or email silverwillowgallery@gmail.com.
Orono Quilters, a chapter of Maine's Pine Tree QuiltersGuild, meets at 7 p.m. the second and fourth Wednesdays of eachmonth, starting Sept. 12, at the Senior Center on Pine Street,behind the library, in Orono. A pizza party will take place at 6p.m. before the meeting.
Events and activities for the year willinclude sampler blocks, Show and Tell, holiday stockings forchildren in need, Christmas potluck, a retreat in Belfast in Marchand a Quilt Show in Old Town in May. Annual dues are $20. Forinformation about joining the group, email oronoquilters@yahoo.comor call Leslie Astbury at 862-3448 or Carlene Thompson at 848-4904. Members of the Bangor Area Sewing Guild will gather at 8:30 a.m.Saturday, Sept.
Wool Felt Shoes is a suitable choice for enterprises that want to do business online, we provides low price and fine commodities such as Wool Felt Shoes, and many other products, just visit it !
I am an expert from 100woolfelt.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Wool Felt Shoes , China Felt Sauna Hats, Grey Wool Felt,and more.
Related Articles -
Wool Felt Shoes, China Felt Sauna Hats,
|
