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How to downsize a straw hat. Using a band-aid how to reduce the size of a hat and not only. How to properly clean a felt hat

Reducing the size hats. The hat you like may be too big, then how to reduce the size of the hat? To do this, you just need to stick a sticky patch on the inner tape. If necessary, glue 2-3 layers. And on hot days, the patch will absorb excess sweat.

Capturing tools. For wrapping handles various tools(hammer, sledgehammer, chisel, hacksaw, etc.) to make them better to grip, there is probably no better sticky plaster. Using a plaster, the handles of tools in the hands hold tighter, and even when the hand sometimes sweats, it absorbs moisture. The handles must be wrapped in such a way that the overlap of the turns is approximately half the width of the patch. Layers must be made the required number for a confident holding in the hand. Here are some useful examples of using the patch:

  • Screwdrivers often have a too thin and slippery handle, and it is inconvenient to hold, and even more so work with them, turning and turning unyielding screws. The handle is wrapped until it feels comfortable to hold the tool. Moreover, it becomes especially important for those who have arthritis of the fingers.
  • At the carpentry workers can take a lot of things into service, for example, they almost always wrap an ax handle or a hammer handle with a band-aid. This is done in order to hold the handles when the hands start to sweat. Only the surface to be gripped is wrapped. It can be wrapped with plaster in several layers and directly under the hammer or ax to protect the shaft in case of a miss.
  • locksmiths the plaster also keeps in the environment of the tools. When it becomes necessary to cut a pipe, and the hacksaw cannot reach the cut, they simply take the canvas and make a mini-hacksaw, wrapping one end with a band-aid to get a handle.

We remove the splinter. It happens that a splinter is so small that it is practically invisible, and even it can sit deep and pull it out using tweezers, which is also almost impossible. We will not suffer, trying to extract it with a needle. A splinter can simply be sealed with a sticky patch for 2-3 days, after removing the patch it should come out.

A bit of history. The grandfather of the bactericidal patch was invented again by the notorious Americans, somewhere in the 20s of the last century. Housewife Josephine Dixon always got into stories and something happened to her. This ability of hers contributed to the invention, because wounds and burns had to be treated with something by her husband Earl, who worked at Johnson and Johnson. He came up with the idea of ​​gluing pieces of sterile gauze on adhesive tape and rolling it up so that his Josephine could cut and stick the pieces herself. Well, the company where Earl worked soon began the industrial production of a bactericidal patch. In the year of Earl's death in 1961, he was already a member of the board of directors, sales of a bactericidal patch reached 30 million of the notorious American bucks.

Cowboy hats are divided into several types, according to the materials used for their production and special processing, and therefore it is necessary to choose their size for yourself in different ways. Hats are rolled or weaved on special blanks imitating a human head, but the blanks are absolutely smooth and do not take into account your hair, if you are bald, then this is one thing, and if your hair is wild enough, then this should definitely be taken into account.

Here is a classic sizing chart for sizing hats

in order to measure your head correctly, you need to take the correct flexible tailor's centimeter (this is such a strip of oilcloth with a applied centimeter-millimeter scale). And wrap around the head at a distance of about 1 centimeter above the upper edge of the ear, not tight and so that this tape does not hang out. Then see how many centimeters it turned out and determine the size according to the table.

1) Hats made of felt or wool

These hats are custom made to measure. Felt has the ability to stretch while wearing, and if you take the hat exactly in size, then at the beginning it can even be a little tight, but after a short time this hat sits exactly on the head of its owner and follows all its contours. That is why a real cowboy will not let anyone try his hat.

2) Straw cowboy hats.

a) There are hats made of raw straw, hay (dried grass), palm leaves and so on, for example, these:

These hats are made from rather soft grass, which can stretch a little over time. But I still prefer to take such hats 1 size larger. This allows you to adjust the size of the hat depending on the splendor of your hair at a particular moment. You can easily reduce the size of the hat by sticking on the hat itself under the inner strip ("sweatband"), for example, electrical tape, or by sewing on a strip of fabric. If you take the hat exactly "in size", then the hat will sit very tightly on your head, which can even cause a headache, but for that you can even hang upside down and the hat will not fall off you. It's not bad if you only wear a hat to perform at the rodeo.

b) hats made of lacquered straw, hay (dried grass), palm leaves, and so on, for example, these:

These hats are very tough. I prefer to order them one size up and adjust the size (if necessary) by gluing on the hat itself, under the inner strip ("sweatband"), for example, electrical tape, or sew on a strip of fabric.

3) Leather hats.

By by and large, cowboys do not wear leather hats, with the exception of Australians. Leather hats are the prerogative of bikers. These hats can also be taken "size to size", as the skin stretches very well. I hope my experience will help you right choice and buy a good cowboy hat

In any case, the choice is yours to make.

If the hat gets very wet,it should be stuffed with well-kneaded newsprint and left to dry in a warm place. While the hat is still damp, it must be brushed over with a clean brush in the direction of the pile.
This tip applies to fedoras, corduroys, and other headwear. After such drying, they do not lose their shape and appearance.
Felt hat brimsometimes become wavy, irregularly curved. In this case, they can be ironed with a moderately hot iron through a soft, damp cloth, placing a soft bedding underneath.
Still hot from the iron and wet from the steam, the brim of the hat is carefully bent in the right places, giving them the desired shape, and brushed over the felt with a clean brush to lift the crumpled pile. You can also iron the top of the hat if you put a bag of sand or crumpled paper in it.
Velor hats cannot be ironed.
To keep the hat from sweatit is recommended to put a strip of blotting paper on the inside under the leather tape and change it from time to time.
sweat stainson felt hats, they are well removed with a gruel of burnt magnesia and a small amount of water. After covering the spots with gruel, let it dry, and then remove the remaining magnesia with a brush. You can also use a solution of ammonia in water.
Before brushing your hatit is useful to pre-fill the top of it with paper, as when staring.
Felt hats are cleaned with half diluted ammonia,with subsequent processing with a clean brush in the direction of the pile. You can also use gasoline, but then wipe the hat with vinegar water.


Brown fedorasclean with tobacco broth, but so that the hat does not get wet through. When cleaning, the surface of the hat is carefully brushed in the direction of the pile.
Light colored felt hatscleaned as follows. The brush is slightly moistened and, dipped in table salt, the hat is treated in the direction and against the pile.
The hat can also be cleaned with a stiff brush moistened with ammonia diluted with water.
white felt hats,if they are not very dirty, it is enough to wipe with bran. Stains or greasy spots are lightly rubbed with a piece of pumice stone.
More soiled hats are first cleaned with a brush dipped in gasoline, and then washed with a mixture consisting of a liter of water, 2 tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide and a teaspoon of ammonia.
White felt cloaks are cleaned in the same way.
velor hat,lost appearance can be significantly refreshed by brushing it over the pile over steam.
white straw hats,if they are heavily soiled, wash with a small brush with warm soapy water. Then wash off the soap with clean water and wipe the hat with a white rag or towel. After that, they are evenly moistened with hydrogen peroxide, dried and ironed through a white cloth with a non-hot iron.
yellowed straw hatcan be bleached by cutting off the yellow part of the peel (zest) from half a lemon and evenly wiping it over the entire surface of the hat.
In this form, the hat is left for 30 - 40 minutes, then washed with a brush dipped in tepid water, dried with a towel and carefully ironed with a non-hot iron through a dry white cloth.
Instead of lemon, you can use a mixture of parts of hydrogen peroxide and 2 parts of ammonia. Before cleaning, the hat is pre-straightened, just like a felt hat.
Old, unrepairable felt hats make very good shoe insoles.To do this, the felt must be wetted and straightened under the iron. It is good to glue pieces of felt to the legs of furniture: this saves carpets and floors.
Kepi, caught in heavy rain,usually lose their shape. Gotta get the bag soft tissue, for example, a small pillowcase, and, putting it inside the cap, fill it tightly with dry, heated sand. Having tied the opening of the bag, the cap is turned over and placed on a flat surface, having previously laid several sheets of paper. The sand in the bag is crushed so as to give the cap the desired shape, after which its surface is gently smoothed by hand.
To make the cap dry faster, you can iron it several times through a rag with a not very hot light iron. Especially carefully it is necessary to iron the visor.
If you want to do without ironing, then put several layers of paper on top of the visor and press it with an even, rather heavy load.

How to Stretch a Felt Hat

Over time, from various external influences, the felt may settle. Often, a felt hat is given to us as a gift. In both cases, we encounter the problem of a discrepancy between the size of the crown of the felt hat and the head of the owner. Also, the shape of the hat brim often deteriorates. In such cases, the question arises - how to stretch a felt hat? In order to give the felt hat the desired shape, it is necessary to wet it. The fact is that felt is easy to edit when it is wet.

Therefore, in order to stretch a felt hat, you need:

1) Prepare a blank of the correct shape. In the simplest case, it can be a jar, a saucepan, flower pot, or another everyday object of a suitable shape. But still, it is advisable to choose a blank as close as possible to the shape and size of your head, you may have to carve it out of wood.

2) Thoroughly steam the felt hat at the base of the crown over the steam from the kettle. Make sure that the fire does not fall on the felt, we only need to steam the hat, and not burn it!

3) Pull the hat evenly over the prepared blank. Make sure that the shape of the hat is preserved and the brim is not deformed. 4) After the hat dries and sits well, it can be removed. Of course, in any case, it is best to contact a good hatmaker in your city.

He will definitely tell you how to stretch a felt hat, but if you are not sure that you can do everything right, or the hat is very dear to you, we still recommend that you contact a good hat maker.

Felt hats are very easily soiled hats, so you must follow the rules for wearing and storing such a hat. But despite all the caution in using a felt hat, still quite often people wonder - how to clean a felt hat? The most common enemies of a felt hat are street dust and sweat. In order to get rid of them, you need to mix table salt, ammonia and table vinegar in a ratio of 1.5:5:5. With the resulting solution, use a white cloth to clean the hat and wipe it dry with another cloth. For more serious contamination, you can use a combination of ammonia with aviation gasoline.

After you clean the hat in this way, wipe it with a cloth soaked in a solution of vinegar and water in a proportion of 1 tbsp. for 1 glass respectively. In case the hat has faded over time, it can be steamed in the same way as when stretching the hat. After steaming, brush the hat with a soft, clean brush in the direction of the hat pile.

It is also worth considering the color of the headdress. So, if you have a white felt hat, then you can clean it with ordinary bran. To do this, you need to rub them into the surface of the hat, and then carefully knock it out from the inside. So, she will restore her former appearance. If you have a brown hat, then a decoction of tobacco leaves is suitable for it. To do this, you need to cook tobacco leaves in the proportion of 1 tbsp. for 1 liter of water.

After cleaning, you should also wipe it with a clean, dry cloth. True, this method has one drawback - a decoction of tobacco leaves is very odorous and after such a cleaning, you should hang your hat on Fresh air for at least a few days. Well, if serious, stubborn stains appear on your hat, then you should not despair. To do this, you can use special stain removers.

Moisten a cloth with the product and wipe the stained area, then dry the treated area with another cloth. Be sure to read the instructions before using such a tool and do everything carefully! Never use white stain remover on colored hats!

Well, in order to have as few reasons as possible for cleaning felt hats, we recommend that you store your hat in a place protected from dust, corrosive gases and oil fumes.

Also, make sure that the hat is not subjected to uneven impact, such as if it were hanging on a hook. Of course, felt does not like moisture and wearing such a hat in rainy weather would be very reckless. The ideal option to store a felt hat will be dense cardboard box, in which a hat wrapped in fabric is placed, stuffed inside with soft, clean paper. We hope that now you will not have a question about how to clean a felt hat and these tips will help you keep it in good condition for a long time.



At some point, I realized that for further work I simply needed a hat blank.
Most often, I don’t knit hats, but sew them, so it’s important for me to be able to create patterns and model directly on the form, with the possibility of further steaming. After digging around on the Internet, I found a great idea.

I bought a roll of tape, pinned up my hair, put a plastic bag over my hair, and asked my mom to tape it to fit. Having removed the resulting soft form, I put it on a 3-liter bottle, wrapped in a towel to the desired diameter, and got the height of my form.
I got 25 cm in height.

This soft form could simply be stuffed tightly with, say, cloth, or filled mounting foam- then the blank can be used for felting - but I decided to do it differently. Having straightened the form, I glued it from the inside with papier-mâché - newspapers with PVA glue. Having made 5-6 layers, I dried the mold with a hair dryer and carefully pulled out the still wet, but no longer damp, blank from the adhesive mold.

after gluing and thoroughly drying the layers, I began to smooth out the irregularities on the outer surface of the mold. In the future, I plan to polish the form in order to use it for working with felt caps - but I will need to think over the system of margins and top nozzles of the crown. So far, I have limited myself to stretching a couple of hats to my size - my father's bowler hat and my mother's
a hat converted into a bowler hat. I have 5 Size 8, and standard hats are small for me - I always had to get out with a kettle.

Did you know that a felt hat can be reduced or enlarged by a size or two? To increase, wind a towel around a 3-liter bottle so that the diameter matches your size (or just use a blank of your size), heat the kettle and steam the wrong side of your hat over the spout well (of course, first you need to tear off the lining and hat ribbon, leaving only the felt basis.)
After steaming the hat, pull it over the "shape" and let it dry. sew back the lining. or sew a new one.

To reduce the size, buy a grosgrain ribbon (corsage is also suitable) and sew it to the crown from the inside. slightly fitting the felt along the tape.

Of course, while my form still needs to be finalized inside and out, but I was so eager to try it out in action! I decided to try out a new warp pattern that I saw in a book on making hats from the beginning of the last century.

This cloche - a turban made of lace and satin lined with warm fleece, I assembled in just 4 hours, with interruptions - without a blank, such a design was inaccessible to me. First, I sewed a fleece base - it is warm and does not blow through. Then, pulling everything on a blank, I began to form draperies right on it. In the end, I steamed the finished hat right on the blank - it can easily withstand the iron!

Here is the result.
Of course, I will make the next hat on a blank, taking into account the nuances that emerged in the process, but the new possibilities are simply breathtaking!

Straw hats are quite easily deformed, especially when traveling. However, do not immediately throw away a crumpled hat. It is quite easy for a straw hat to return to its original shape.

Steps

Steaming and moistening the hat

    Consider steaming your hat. You may want to try steaming the hat first. This is usually done with a garment steamer or an iron with a steam function. You can also try taking your hat to a specialty hat shop that has an industrial hat steamer, but this is not necessary.

    Raise the brim of the hat and steam it around the perimeter of the brim. Keep the source of steam at a distance of 15-20 cm from the hat so as not to scald your hands. Then lower the margins back.

    • After processing the brim of the hat, run the steam directly into the crown.
    • Steam should begin to seep through the holes in the weaves of straw. Do not let the steamer or iron touch the hat.
    • Continue steaming until the hat is damp. Don't worry about wetting your hat too much, as the moisture will help straighten it out.

  1. Straighten the shape of the hat with your fingers. Once the hat is well dampened and still steaming, begin to adjust the deformed sections of the hat into place. Keep shaping the hat with your hands as you continue to steam it.

    • When shaping the hat, do not forget to spread the weaves of straw evenly. You can also use a spoon to straighten your hat over steam, rather than your fingers.
    • After steaming your hat, place a round bowl, rolled-up towel, or other object inside the hat to help keep the top in shape.
    • When steaming a hat, you may need gardening gloves or oven mitts. Working with steam is quite dangerous, so you must be careful not to burn yourself.

  2. Wet your hat with water. If steaming your hat does not work for you, you can try dampening the hat with water. This method is especially useful when the brim of a straw hat is wrinkled. Spray your hat with water from a spray bottle. When dried, the straw should take on its original shape, as moisture makes it more plastic.

    Lay the hat down and let it dry. Once you have finished steaming or dampening your hat, it will need to be dried.

    • If, after drying, the hat does not acquire perfect shape, repeat the steaming or humidifying process again.
    • It all depends on the degree of deformation of the hat. Some hats require only one steaming or moisturizing treatment, while others require a second treatment.
    • However, try to fix everything in one procedure, as permanent molding straw hat doesn't work very well for her.

    Giving the hat the right shape

    1. Roll up a towel to straighten the crown. Instead of steaming or dampening your hat, you can try simply straightening it out. For the best effect, it will be useful to moisten the towel on which you will straighten it. Moisture will help the straw gain plasticity. A towel will replace your head.

      Put your hat on a round object. Instead of a towel, you can take a bowl or other suitable object and put the hat tightly on it. So you can return the crown to the correct rounded shape.

    2. Iron the hat. Lay the brim of the hat on the edge of the ironing board with the back up. Cover them with a damp cloth. Set the iron to a high enough temperature.

      • Iron the fields through a damp cloth. Do this very carefully and quickly, do not allow direct contact between the iron and the hat. This is very important as you can scorch the straw.
      • As you iron the brim of the hat, rotate it. Then iron the tulle. Ironing the crown requires special care and consideration of the style of its design. Be careful when ironing with straw. If you do not put a damp cloth between the iron and the straw, you can set the hat on fire.
      • Try not to wrinkle or deform the hat again, as the straw will be loosened after the first time. With each subsequent deformation, the hat will become less durable, individual straws will begin to weaken and crack.