Designing and Making Hats and Headpieces - Hardcover

Designing and Making Hats and Headpieces is an inspiring and instructional guide to the art of millinery. It explains how to go about designing a hat, what equipment and materials you will need, and the techniques required to get started. It divides the projects into three types of hat - blocked, headpieces and fascinators, and cut and sewn - and thereby describes how to make fourteen different designs. It goes on to suggest ways of finishing the hats with embellishments such as bows, felt, veiling and flowers. Drawing on her rich experience, the author generously shares her ideas and her advice so that you can achieve a professional finish and make a design that flatters the wearer and completes an outfit. With beautiful photographs and clear instructions, this book is an essential guide for anyone who wants to design and make a hat for a daily outing, a special occasion or a costume.

Judy Bentinck is a practising traditional couture milliner, making contemporary hats that are both wearable and flattering. She also teaches millinery at Central St Martins in London, and runs her own courses from her central London studio. Judy studied printed textile design at Liverpool John Moores University, before spending several years designing and making theatre and film costumes for the RSC, the BBC and the Royal Opera House. She made her first hat while teaching costume design at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Trained by Rose Cory, royal warrant holder and world-renowned teacher, Judy passes on her passion for millinery in this book, showing the increasingly popular traditional techniques that make handmade hats not things of beauty, but works of art.