Local news

The Pavilion Club - September 2015

Apart from a delightful coach trip to Chartwell, probably the highlight for Pavilion Club Members in August was a talk from our local Milliner, Sarah McAlister about hat making. 

Sarah brought with her a selection of different hats from her collection, together with the blocks used to make them and samples of the various materials employed. She described in detail all the processes involved – from damping, steaming and pulling - to get the basic shape required,  to the intricate hand sewing involved in a creation.  Straws hats, for example come in various types of ‘straw’ including man-made varieties, all of which are produced in rolls of single strands, which then have to be stitched together to form the crowns and then the brims before joining the two. 

The fun part, for a milliner is probably choosing the fabrics and trims for decoration once the hard work of creating the basic shape has been completed. 

After Sarah’s very informative talk, we were given the opportunity of trying on some of her ‘historical’ creations which was great fun, and all of us understood why made-to-order hats and caps are expensive – designing and making them doesn’t just involve great skill but it is also time consuming, and the materials themselves are costly too. 

Jill T.