Haberdasheries: 80 cm (part) cotton 1” wide grosgrain ribbon, WLA badge
Oh dear, the last time I posted was april! It probably seems like I
didn’t do anything for several months, but I did sew – mainly alterations and
other things that weren’t really blog-worthy though.
But here’s something I’ve made that I do think is worth posting: a World
War 2 Women’s Land Army (WLA) hat. Obviously I didn’t make this as a standalone
item, but am working on a complete WLA uniform. Most of which I, happily,
have been able to buy instead of sew! The only thing I’m missing is the sweater, which is rather
hard to come by in wool.
You can find photos of the WLA on my WLA Pinterest page.
I bought the 100% wool brown hat on sale at H&M. Here’s how it
looked before I customised it:
The main example I used to base my hat on, was this one from the
Imperial War Museum:
Hat: Women’s Land Army © IWM (UNI 73)
As you can see, the hat has a very particular shape. I expected it would
be no problem to permanently reshape my hat, simply by wetting it, shaping it
and letting it dry. But what was I going to use as a mould? Eventually I found
several items that had the right size to form the mould:
And once I had found those, it was indeed very easy to shape the hat. After
the hat had dried (which took rather a long time!), I cut about 4 cm from the
brim. I sewed on an at least part cotton beige grosgrain ribbon (it was
difficult to source the right colour AND width, but eventually I found the
right ribbon on Etsy), and pinned on the reproduction WLA badge. And here’s the
result!
I did a quick, untidy, sort of ‘40s updo to model the hat. Naturally I’ll post photos of the entire uniform once I’ve worn it, but I don’t know when that will be!
