The Hat Book: Creating Hats for Every Occasion

The introduction starts with a fun hat story, “the international milliner, Graham Smith, tells a story of persuading his mother to-wear an outrageous creation to a party: she burst into tears in the taxi. She absolute ghastly when she walked in - but it was such a conversation piece that she was immediately whisked away and I didn’t see her again all evening. A good hat can be wonderful moral.” The author does a good job with a brief history on hats and their culture background. Good stuff to know when designing hats. The hats presented are basic, with too much paper spent on knitting. I would have loved to have read more on how to embellish and with what. Some information is covered in that chapter. Over all a fun read, beautiful phots and some hat background info. A nice Book for my craft library.

I agree with other reviewers that this book is not for the serious miliner. However, if you want to dabble a bit, or have a fun hat that you'd like to spruce up - this will do the job for you. As usual with Juliet Bawden books, it's beautifully photographed and designed.

I have this book and I like it. You can get some nice ideas from it, but if you make hats for a living...it's not for you. It is really for someone who plays at hat making.

I beg to differ with others comments that this book wasn't as helpful as they would have liked. It gave great examples of what was possible in design. I found it more interesting than the 'from the neck up book' which was too technical. First off, the photography is great. The examples of hats are awesome. I loved the project for the appliqued garland straw brim. Overall,it's a great book to have if you're interested in millinery.