White Hat
Ruth Hurlock

The story of my hat

A few years ago, I spent a long weekend in Amsterdam and saw an exhibiton of hats called "Chapeau, Chapeaux". The idea for the exhibition came from a collection of mainly French hats given to the Rijksmuseum by a woman who had lived in Paris between 1937 and the 1960s.The rest of the hats were from the museum's own collection. Some had interesting histories, like the cardboard soldiers' hats made at a time when the current war went too fast to find a hatter able to supply hats quickly enough; but they felt unable to send soldiers to war with nothing on their heads - so they made cardboard hats and covered them with shiny black paper. The hats looked authentic; and before the invention of the tin helmet, it is unlikely that much war headgear saved head injuries.

What intrigued me a great deal was a beautiful white pillbox of embroidered linen, which a woman had made during her first pregnancy, and which she had presented to her husband to celebrate the birth. It was so finely embroidered that it was difficult to see what else she managed to do while she was pregnant.

Some time ago, I went into the loft and found a ball of very fine string - the sort you think too good to throw away, but cannot imagine what to do with it. So I made a pill box hat, using soluble fabric and the foot on my sewing machine through which I could thread the string and zigzag over it, plus lots of other machine stitching and some net, all in shades of ecru.