Bonnets are very useful items of historical clothing. Of course they add that little pinch of magic to complete an outfit, but their other benefits are numerous! They hide modern hair, or period bad hair days. They protect the face and eyes from the sun (well, some models do...), which is vital for time periods where sunglasses aren't allowed - oh, that's nearly all of them. They can add a certain anonymity by hiding the wearers face from view.

Bonnets, at least close fitting ones with deep brims (my preferred variety), also stay on the head significantly better than wide-brimmed hats, whether of the modern or period variety. Sunbonnets of soft cloth also have the advantage of folding up real small and then returning to their intended shape afterwards. I know the legends tell of foldable straw hats for modern people, but I've never seen one in the wild.

Now, I am a hat wearer in my everyday life. I dislike sunglasses because they pinch my temples, or they bump my eyelashes, or they are irredeemably ugly, or some combination of the three. But I also hate having the sun in my eyes and then having a squint-fest. Eventually squinting gives me a headache. The obvious solution? Bonnets! All the good qualities outlined above speak loudly in favor of bonnets. And, what do you know, I've already got a stash of them!

In Real Life the bonnet which I most often wear is this polka-dot sunbonnet. Period-wise its honestly a little dubious, with the embroidered dots (machine-made, part of the fabric, I'm not a loon), the very short neck curtain, front lace trim, and the weird scallops on the chin ties (again, a machine-embroidered edge treatment on the fabric. It began life as a set of baby-crib sheets, so.). This kind of soft corded bonnet was usually made for a day's work, and there's just a funny lack of many important workday features (like a curtain that really protects the neck) and too many funny fashion-y choices (the swiss dot, the lace). Its quite a hardy little bonnet, though - I think I've even machine-washed it, once! Cording takes a while to dry but is otherwise perfectly washable.

"So whats the catch?" you say. "There's always a catch." You know me and my black humor too well, my dear.
But you're right: there is one leeeeeetle problem.

Other people.

Now it's worth noting here that I dress pretty weird, in real life. There's a long origin story, but the end result is, I usually wear long skirts, tons of jewelry, regularly borrow articles out of my historical wardrobe, and generally stand out from the crowd. All this to say, I'm used to people looking at me. I'm even used to strangers asking me "What's the occasion?" as they walk by with a dog.

The thing about the bonnet, though? It's way worse. 10000x worse. Not only do people stare, they stare so hard that it crosses from "curious and probably rude" to "making a fool of oneself". I was waiting at a bus stop once, in my bonnet, and a passing driver slowed down and turned their head all the way around to keep looking at me for as long as possible. I'm literally causing distracted driving? Wild.

I also get more vocal attention. One particularly bad day I was walking home from work. At one end of the block a random guy asked me what play I was in. One minute later, at the other end of the block, a carful of pre-teen girls screamed "AMISH!!" out the window at me. I made eye contact with the car's driver. I hope those kids got an earful.

I've always found that my strange manner of dress elicits unusual responses from people, but something about the addition of the bonnet overloads people's ability to censor themselves.  And of course, all of this is from the days before "Handmaid's Tale" came into our lives. This summer I've only just started to get the bonnet out (because a girl can only stand so much attention at a time, har), but I wonder if people's automatic reaction to the sight will be changed by this new infringement of bonnets into America's popular consciousness. If, and How.

Perhaps sometime I'll make a whole post about my unusual fashion choices. The obnoxious questions people ask often make me more determined to keep "being myself" - the more people are exposed to random difference, the less likely they will be to be randomly rude to other people who look different.

Well, it sounds plausible, anyway.

I'm planning a wee bit of 1810s reenacting at the Old Manse with one of my friends from high school - another case of "Nancy drags her non-reenactor friends into reenacting", which of course means that I'm in charge of all the costumes! Let's be real, I wouldn't have it any other way. But of course, instead of starting right in on a nice transitional stay for her to wear, I was like, this needs new bonnets! And to be fair I haven't got any good 1810s bonnets for summer. I have a wool one but that's only appropriate for December weather. So the first bonnet is all done now (the second one is that black one that was on my worktable, and will stay there till I've finished the transitional stay! We won't even be outside really...)
I took loads of pictures - LOADS of pictures - during construction so here's a kind of tutorial type thing.
I was aiming for something kind of like the center bonnet in this fashion plate (the blue and white one - everything I own is blue and white).

Because I'm cheapycheap and don't have a lot of "real" hatmaking supplies, I decided to make this one out of an old 18th century bergere which was constructed from cardboard! Like cereal box cardboard. It's better than posterboard, that much can be said for it. I had the bergere brim lying about because I remade it out of buckram with wire.
So I cut that brim in half, and laid the halves ugly sides together.

The cardboard had been covered with fabric by means of glue, so there were weird scraggly bits on the "back". So those got sandwiched in the middle.
Then I "pinned" the halves together around the outside brim edge with binder clips. I started with one in the middle and then bent the whole thing against my work surface to clip the rest.

That way the outside layer is a teeeny bit bigger than the inside layer, which makes the bonnet brim more inclined to hold it's curved shape. It can't really lay flat because then it does this:

A bit hard to explain, but it's good magic, I promise.
So then I got out some thread (in a random teal color b/c who cares not me) and stitched the brim(s) together around the outside edge. I mostly went through the fabric parts and also a little the edge of the cardboard. I mostly avoided the cardboard because cardboard isn't really a party to sew through.
Then it was time for the crown. I needed to shape the back of the brim so the crown attachment would sit in the right place on my head. I forget exactly how I did this; I think I basically just set it on my head and guessed. I drew on a new crown line and cut it with tin snips - I was hiding from the heat in the basement, where the hardcore tools are, and anyway it would have been a nightmare to cut even with sharp paper scissors (of which we have 0).

Now, the plan was to make the crown out of the back of this old cap I had, which was the same fabric as the brim covering (and anyway, what was this cap supposed to be? Certainly doesn't match any fashions I know of from the 1700-1900 periods). So I liberated the cap crown from its brim and binder clipped it to the brim, right sides together...

... and put the hat on for a moments test, and ascertained that, oh yeah, part of the reason I never use this cap is that its TOO SMALL.
Not a lot too small, either, just an infuriating couple inches. So I went upstairs into the gross oven world and retrieved a bit of more fabric.

Not the same color, really, but I figured, there'll be trim on the borders between the fabrics and anyway there's a tradition of costumers/reenactors having brims and crowns that don't match so I can't be breaking tooo many rules.
So I cut a new crown like 3 inches bigger than the other one and clipped it to the brim, and sewed it down. Because, as mentioned, cardboard is not a party to sew through, it required some convincing with my awl. But I got the crown sewn from one side to the other and then I went back the other way again (which is sort of cheater's saddle stitch) to squish down the freehand gathering that was necessary to get the pieces attached.

So then I gathered the backside of the crown down, and bound it with some of the fabric from the brim of the Unfortunate Too-Small Cap. I measured it against my head a number of times while doing this, and wound up with a very snug fit - perhaps a bit more snug than is really ideal, given the presence of hair and possibly day caps meant to fit under it and then emerge unscathed. For the most part given the sort of reenacting I do the bonnet will probably be on all the time or hanging out as decor all the time, so maybe it isn't an issue that'll come up, but I'm still a little annoyed about it (especially since I ALWAYS DO THIS. I never remember to account for the underthings...). But, voila, bonnet!

Then there was the matter of trimmings. I didn't actually take any pictures of this. It was a bit trial and error and a lot sewing bits of trim to other bits of trim. I though there would be flowers on it, but in the end there weren't any. And I managed to avoid having to sew through the cardboard at all when applying the trim!

I'm sooooooo pleased with it! I think it really looks very like my inspiration, but not too much. So pretty~!

Right now, this new bonnet is on my worktable:

Well, it doesn't look like much just now. I started with a commercial straw hat and in picked the straw down to the crown, and now I'm going back in to make a new brim. I'm aiming for something like this:

At this stage it looks more like an Amish bonnet.