Granado Esparda Female Musketeer Hat

I’ve wanted to make the Female Musketeer from Granado Esparda for two years (at least) and this year I finally gathered all the fabric, patterns, buttons, and supplies needed to make the costume. The first part of the costume I worked on was the musketeer’s hat.

After about a month (maybe more) of work, I finally finished the hat a few days ago.

One of the hardest parts for me in making this costume was to find what the hat looked like and what pattern I should use to make it. It’s not seen a lot, and I couldn’t find very many pictures of the hat that were clear or large enough for me to figure out what type of hat it is. I finally gave up and decided to make a hat that looked the way I thought would fit with the costume and I would like to wear.

After searching pattern sites and historical costuming sites, I decided to make the hat out of the Elizabethan Riding Hat from Patterns of Time. I did not make it exactly how the instructions said to make it, mostly because I couldn’t find the right supplies to make the hat. I decided to make the hat out of heavy weight fusible interfacing because, like I said before, I couldn’t or didn’t know where to find the right hat making supplies needed to make the hat the way the instructions called for.

Clicking on the picture will take you to the deviantART page of the hat using the same photograph below.

The rest of the hat is made exactly as the instructions said to make it. (Sans the suggested fabric) The hat is made out of green broadcloth, the trim is dark green velvet, and the gold piping and trim was found at the craft store. The feathers were found at the craft store and are held together with a black satin ribbon I sewed around the bunched up feathers. The button on the feathers was found at a craft store and is also sewn on, but the whole entire feather/buttons group is detachable and is held onto the hat with two sew-on snaps. (I may add more if I have trouble with the feathers flopping around while I wear the hat, but at this time the feathers don’t flop so I won’t add any more onto the hat.)

‘ve learned so much from making this hat and what can and cannot go wrong while making it. I’d like to make another hat exactly like this one using heavy weight fusible interfacing in the future, but one of the things I will add is a wire cage as a base for the hat to add stability. I didn’t do it to this one, and after my dog decided the hat would be a great pillow and crushed it with his head, I realized the hat isn’t as strong as I thought it was. (That’s why the hat has wrinkles all over it.)

I know some people who would like to have a tutorial on how to make a hat out of heavy weight fusible interfacing and wire because they (and I as well) cannot find one online. I do plan on making a tutorial that explains how to make a hat with interfacing, but I’m still trying to decide what type of hat to make in the tutorial and what steps I want to talk about. So, please do not expect the tutorial to come very soon. 🙂