2013 Millinery Classes...Workshops...Courses

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hoping everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's holiday.  Now time to start the new year and look forward to all the promise of a new start for each of us.

Firstly, I'm announcing the 2013 millinery courses, workshops, classes...whatever you want to call them.  Most are weekend classes but some are 4-6 days.  I'll be teaching all over the USA--Atlanta, Washington,DC, San Francisco/Berkeley, San Antonio, and some of the most prestigious art/craft schools in the country.  Hopefully, you will be able to come to a class that suits your needs.  If not please stay-tuned here because.....

I hope to be posting more tutorials this coming year.  Pictorials that will show how to work in straw, buckram, sewn braid, flowermaking, felt, feathers and more!

Thanks for reading and posting your comments throughout the year!

PLEASE NOTE THAT MANY OF THESE CLASSES WILL NOT BE LISTED ON THE VENUE WEBSITES UNTIL CLOSER TO THE DATES OF THE CLASS.  Check with them regularly as some venues fill up the classes within weeks of posting registration.

May 18-19, 2013
Spruill Center For the Arts, 5339 Chamblee Dunwoody Road, Atlanta, GA 30338

Hat Shapes Using Wet Buckram: 
Unique cocktail and fascinator headpiece shapes are the goal for this fashion forward millinery class.  Learn to use buckram, a woven millinery foundation, to wet shape your hat frames. Many hat styles possible and all are student created. Wiring frames and covering with domette are also important parts of the class.  To complete your hats, learn pleating, smocking and ruching  to cover the hat frames in luscious fabrics and also how to make pretty linings. Two hats will be made in class. Individual coaching for all skill levels will be available.

REGISTER HERE (You will be taken to the venue’s webite for registration).

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June 8-9, 2013
Southwest School of Art, 300 Augusta, San Antonio, TX

Dyeing to Make Hats
Easy to use, non-toxic professional dyes will be used to dye a hood (sleeve/cone) and several lengths of millinery straw yardage: sinamay, jinsin, paris cloth, silk straw and/or raffia cloth.  Techniques include gradient dyeing, vat dyeing, painting/stamping, and free-form (tie-dye) dyeing.  Make your straws unique in color, shading, design!  Time permitting we will create one free-form styled hat from the straw.

REGISTER HERE (You will be taken to the venue’s webite for registration).

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June 22-23, 2013
Jacksonville Center for the Arts,
220 Parkway Lane South, Suite 1, Floyd, Virginia, 24091

Hatmaking: Blocking Straws and Felts
Interested in creating beautiful big brimmed straw hats for Summer and close fitting felt cloches for Winter? This fun-filled class allows you to use traditional millinery hatblocks, in varying shapes, to steam block straws and felts into fabulous hats.  Learn about different kinds of straw and felt, blocking techniques, adding petersham headsize ribbon, wiring brim edges, and some pretty embellishment techniques.  This class is all about old-world millinery techniques not embellishing pre-made hats.  Anyone from complete beginners to more experienced hatmakers can learn from this class. Very basic sewing skills recommended.

REGISTER HERE (You will be taken to the venue’s webite for registration).

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July 12-13, 2013
Judith M. Millinery Supplies, 104 S Detroit St, La Grange, IN 46761

French Flowermaking:
French flowermaking is an age-old process of creating beautiful flowers from specialized tools and rich fabrics. Each heated tool is used to shape fabric petals, leaves, and stems, as well as the textures associated with each flower part. Learn the secrets to prepping and stabilizing fabrics, cutting, shaping and assembly of each petal and part. In this class you will be making 2-3 flowers using the radius head, rattail, spoon, hammer, and knife. Patterns for 3 flowers, stamens and wire will be used along with natural fabric choices--silk, cotton, linen, rayon, bamboo, and lightweight woolen--to create your flowers.

REGISTER HERE (You will be taken to the venue’s webite for registration).

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Lacis Museum of Lace and Textiles, 2982 Adeline Street Berkeley, CA 94703

July 24-25, 2013
Shaded French Flowers:
Interested in creating more natural looking flowers for your hats or home decor?  Learn not only two methods of creating beautiful hand-made flowers using heated flowermaking tools, but learn tips and techniques for shading, granulation, and mark making.  You will learn how to use the various heated tools to create petals full of curls and veining, but also how to add further realism to the flowers by adding color and shading for beauty and depth of perception.  Two assembly techniques will offer you choices on entirely different types of flower backs, important in how they are used on hats, garments and home decor. Patterns for flowers included in class materials--rose and camilla.

REGISTER HERE for Shaded French Flowers (You will be taken to the venue’s webite for registration).

July 26-27 , 2013
Buckram Hats — Pre-Formed and Wet-Shaped:
Create two fabric covered hats using techniques for working with a millinery foundation material--buckram.  Learn not only the different types of buckram available, but about pre-formed shapes/frames as well.  One hat will be created from a selection of commercially available pre-formed shames; additionally you will design your own hat frame using the wet-shaping method.  Learn to cut designs, wire the shapes, cover with domette, and ultimately several fabric manipulation techniques to beautifully and uniquely cover your hat frames. Linings will also be demonstrated. Both hats will be small cocktail or fascinator type hats, but bigger shapes (and the differences in covering with fabrics) will be discussed in class.

REGISTER HERE for Buckram Hats (You will be taken to the venue’s webite for registration).

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September 14-15, 2013
The Art League School/Torpedo Factory
105 North Union Street Alexandria, Virginia 22314

Block Party — Open Studio Hat Blocking
Beginning through advanced milliners will enjoy this class of blocking straws and felts over traditional hat blocks. The Studio will make available over a dozen new and vintage hat blocks to use over the weekend. Beginners will learn the very basics of steam blocking and more advanced students have an opportunity to block as many hats as they like over the more complex hat blocks. Each will progress at their own comfort level. Learn about the blocking differences in felts, straws and other millinery mediums; puzzle blocks; shaping and couture finishing techniques for incredible hats. Many hat styles. Individual coaching for all skill levels will be available.

REGISTER HERE (You will be taken to the venue’s webite for registration).

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September 22-28, 2013
Arrowmont School for Arts and Crafts, 556 Parkway Gatlinburg, TN 37738

Hats, Textiles, Straws to Dye For
Immerse yourself into a weeklong study of millinery techniques, surface design/fabric manipulation, and multiple methods of dying straw for hats.  Firstly, learn to dye natural straw millinery forms and yardage, add some fabric manipulation (slashing, overlaying, dissolving, etc.) to create rich textiles for embellishment, and finally learn some old-world steaming, blocking, and free-form millinery techniques to create a number of unique hats.  A rare combination of skills that beginner to advanced milliners and surface design students will appreciate.  Many styles of hats, many embellishment options, and m,any colors and hues will be combined for beautiful, even quirky resulting headpieces.  Fun and inventive!

REGISTER HERE (You will be taken to the venue’s webite for registration).

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October 19-20, 2013
Spruill Center For the Arts, 5339 Chamblee Dunwoody Road, Atlanta, GA 30338

To be Announced...

San Antonio Millinery Block Making Class

 I love San Antonio, Texas!  I've taught here for several years, on and off, and it is always a pleasure to go back.  Above is a colorful shot on their famous Riverwalk.  Margarita, anyone?

From one of the many river taxis that ply the waters, I made this shot of the river entrance to Southwest School of Art, where I'd be teaching.  The school is on the grounds of an old convent and is beautifully landscaped with large trees, shaded verandahs, and a lovely gazebo.  These steps lead from the river up to the school.

Just another beautiful view of the San Antonio River.


Now on to class.  This class was one that had been asked for several times while teaching at the SSA.  Hatblock making is one of my most requested classes, particularly since the hatblock...the building block of millinery, if you will...can be very expensive, especially the more unusual shapes.  We had a full class of 8!

We are using a common building material, found in home improvement stores, to carve our blocks.  I always caution students to keep their first attempts fairly simple.  The more you know about hat blocks and how straws and felts block over them, the more you will know about how block shapes can be rather deceiving in their complexity.

 JJ is adding some detail to her slope tipped crown block.  We carved only crowns in this class, but you can certainly carve brims as well.

Jean works on a fascinator block from some of the residual foam.  Save those knocked off bits for small hats and fascinators! Jean always does great work. 

Rita, one of my long-time SA students, made two blocks in class.  The first is actually covered in the blocked toasty straw you see in the forefront.  Pretty little cloche block that will get lots of action, being that cloches are one of the most sought after hat shapes. In the background she is working on the saucer hat/brim.  You'll see the results further down this page.

Couple of finished blocks.  Note that they are simple in shape but will create some lovely, usable crown or whole hat shapes.

Austin milliner, Laura Del Villaggio was in class.  What an honor to have one of my peers in class.  Above, you see two hats she blocked on the pieces she made in class .Love the simple lines.  My kind of hats, Laura!

And here you see the saucer hat/brim that Rita created from one of her blocks, using windowpane sinamay.  She later sent me a picture of how she finally finished it off...which you see below.

GORGEOUS, Rita!

Next blog post will be about my June class in Alexandria, Virginia...lots of fascinators!

Thanks for reading and please pass this blog on to your friends.

Hats on Exhibit--Spruill Art Center

I was recently asked by the Spruill Art Center, in Atlanta, Georgia, to exhibit in their art show celebrating their 35th anniversary. This exhibit will hang during the month of July in their Gallery, and the artwork will be for sale--both through the gallery and their website.

Below you will see the two hats I entered. These hats have been given names since the gallery wanted the title of each artist's work. I hate "Untitled" so I named them based on the elements they embue.

This hat is free-form shaped from natural sinamay--a straw that is manufactured in yardage/meters. I love the way it can be manipulated into beautful folds and swirls, creating very abstract shapes. It can also be blocked over hatblocks, but in this case I've simply hand-shaped the hat. There are no embellishments on this hat, except for a piece of frayed black sinamay added for contrast. The hat itself is embellishment enough, don't you think? This hat is entitled, "Roller Coaster."

I've really been interested in creating sewn braid hats recently. Probably because I've taught the skills in the last two classes--in Atlanta and San Antonio. The hat above is a combination of sewn braid circles, about 7 as I remember, tacked together just as they touch each other. I knew I wanted to use this particular peacock feather because it had some lovely shades of lavendar in it. That was the starting point for using the lavendar coqs and veiling. This hat is entitled, "Got My Eye On You."

Happy 35th anniversary, Spruill Art Center!

Texas Millinery Class--Parisisal, Sinamay, Braid

This past weekend I taught a class entitled Sensational Straw: 3 Millinery Techniques, in San Antonio, Texas. The class was held at the Southwest School of Art and Craft, a venue I've taught at three times before. We had a full class of 11 ladies, ready to learn how to work with parisisal capelines and hoods, sinamay (blocked and free-form), and sewn straw braid.

I love Texas! The food, the people, the margaritas! The next couple of shots were taken on the Riverwalk, a beautiful park that meanders through the city along the San Antonio River.

That is a HUGE American flag! Kinda surprised there isn't a Texas flag that big hanging nearby.

Lovely ivy covered bridge over the river. Tour boats and river taxis traverse the river allowing riders to enjoy the beautiful buildings, wildlife, and to people watch.

Amy (from Dallas) chose to work in blocked sinamay and sewn braid. Here you see her brim and the tip of her crown. I love this natural sewn braid. Very classic.

Dale chose to work with an orange parisisal hood and sewn braid.

Here you see a top view of the shape she blocked and free-formed--nice upturned crown.

And here's her final product with a triple row of the natural sewn braid. While it was going to be her brim, it turned into a nice mid-band embellishment. This looked fantastic on her!

Jessica worked with a lavendar parisisal capeline which she then interlaced with the natural sewn braid. So the brim was lavendar, natural, and lavendar again on the outside edge. Nice touch, Jessica!

More of Jessica's hat in progress.

Elizabeth was taken with making a Fedora, which she did a nice job of. She decided to edge the Fedora in aqua sewn braid.

Wiring of the brim edge in progress. See the aqua braid on the side? This is how she will be finishing off the edge of the hat.

This hat is a very nice example of blocked sinamay (crown) and sewn braid (brim). This shot shows the petersham being added to maintain the headsize and to protect the hat from perspiration and makeup.

And this is Sarah in her completed hat! She chose to add a hatband of silk noil which had been created in a recent shibori class.

Nice hat! Aztec statuary on the Riverwalk.

Thank you, Southwest School, for another delightful class of talented students. Always a pleasure!