Another challenge was creating the unusual hat design, as it is just a concept of illustration, so I don’t have any reference images to compare with to check.

First of all, I used water-based hat stiffener to make the felt harder, then using steamer to shape the hat on the right size hat block by using household pins.

Meanwhile, I was mocking up hat shape by using card paper to get the right height and size. Using my knowledge of millinery from second year, I started with the bottom layer of the hat design by using my model’s head measurement and slashed into 8 section to create the curve from top to bottom.

Once the bottom layer was correct, I started to build up layer above, which reduce two panel for the size, and same method for the rest of layers. When the shape is correct, then I started transferring the hat pattern for each of layer into normal pattern drafting paper.

One is to clear the edge, another is making the pattern symmetrical. Once cleaned up for all patterns of each layer, then I transferred them to buckram by using maker pen.