Adventures in Fibre Arts

A place for me to document all my adventures in various fibre arts

Viking age pillbox hat

I decided I needed a hat to go with my Viking outfit. After looking around at different hats I decided to try making my version of the “pillbox” hat found in Leens.

Looking at the historical find the hat is made of 3 pieces of diamond weave material stitched together with a decorative stitch.

To start with I wove myself some diamond weave material. I decided that this one should also send a message of inclusion. While the colours themselves don’t match the period find I like to think the Vikings would have these colours if they could.

After some experiments I decided the black weft looks better than the white.

Once finished I measured around my head and cut the material to the right length. I added some allowance for hemming. My research shows the hem was double rolled and stitched with blanket stitch to keep things from fraying.

I then stitched the ends together with a basting stitch to do a test fit and make sure it was a good fit. The original didn’t have this, but I wanted to do a test. It fit very well, so I then started the decorative stitch along the join. This stitch is slow, but makes a very tight stitch that is very strong.

The final result provides a lot of structure and looks nice (almost like a cord stitched to the hat).

Once the circle is complete I started on the top. I cut 2 pieces of the fabric, blanket stitched the hem (though in this case it’s the selvedge so it wasn’t needed, but I wanted to practice). I also found an image and saw I was doing the blanket stitch on the wrong side, so decided to do it properly.

This time when I did the decorative stitch I tried not pinning or basting and it was easy. So I can see why they might have originally done it that way.

Once I had the rectangle I placed the circle of the hat on top, pushed it around to make it roughly head shaped and then drew an outline. Then came the really scary part, cutting my weaving into a circle.

Once it was cut I then blanket stitched the outside (and saw my circle wasn’t a good circle, but was useable).

Finally it came time to stitch the top to the sides. After stitching the smaller “half” I saw the smaller side was the right diameter, so the bigger side needed to be hemmed a bit more.