My SCA "Viking" Hat Adventures

So, I'm not sure why this never made it on the blog, but for a while I was making some really nicely ugly 6-panel wool and "linen" viking hats for my SCA largesse chest project. I'll probably get more into that later, but suffice to say, it's been in progress for 2-plus years and is proceeding at the speed these things normally do, for me. Hahaha... *sigh*

I don't actually know how period these babies are, but they're pretty accepted as a nice, comfortable and stylish hat at events. I think it's justified based on a Birka find, but that might have only been a four panel hat - I'm just not sure, and I'm honestly too lazy to get into the research again. (I lied, I looked, and yeah, there was a 6-panel hat from Birka.)

Mine are... okay, so my wool? In these it's basically an old olive drab wool blanket. It's a nice, ugly color that I could achieve with natural dyes if I tried, and my "linen" is (on hat 1) an old linen tablecloth remnant, and (on hat 2) a nice bright ass yellow from the JoAnn's linen look line. It's scrap from my two-color apron dress.

This is the general shape of the pieces of the hat.

Six pieces in both lining and outside material are needed. The pattern itself might need to be adjusted for fit as well - I found that using this one lead me to need to adjust the length and the width of the pieces, depending on what size hat I was making.

The size I was making was "BIG" by the way. I have a large head, and if it fits me, it'll fit most people.

I'm just gonna spam a bunch of construction pics now!

This first section is on the lining of Hat 1. Hat one, for the record, was painstakingly and terribly hand sewn. Entirely hand sewn. The process completely converted me into a being of PURE HATE. Just for the record.

Next set of pics is me working on the wool pieces, and then the final product, aka an action shot of me sewing the lining into the wool bit. See what I mean about the ugly olive drab, though?

Lastly, here we have the actual final product, complete with my sloppy ass decorative edging. Honestly, I'm fairly proud of it. In person, it looks nice enough, and fits pretty good, even when I have a ponytail on.

Still, hand sewing can rot.

On my second hat, I chopped this bad boy up and machine sewed it up. Took something like an hour, start to finish. Much faster. Much less hard on my poor crampy hands. I know it's not authentic, but MAN I am sure the likelyhood of this bad boy falling apart is a lot less than my sad hand-sewn one.

This one...uhhh, well, it's still sitting in my craft bag, unfinished. The plan was (IT STILL IS TECHNICALLY I AM JUST SLOW) to add some of my inkle-woven trim. When that goes on, I WILL be hand sewing it on just to be safe.

(There isn't any pics of cutting out the wool in this set because I did that back when I cut out the first set for Hat 1.)

I suspect the end look at this hat will come in an inkle-weaving post. You know, when I finish a damn band.

Also, you can totally see the size I was using noted on the pattern pieces. Sadly I might have lost them and have been trying to figure out WTF I did with them.

That's not an unusual state of affairs but man it's annoying.