But first... Hats!

Before the final post on the VMI uniform, (it is coming, I promise) here are two hats, recently completed. The first is a US Navy flat cap. A common hat worn by almost every single sailor, a large percentage of them have some kind of personal decoration on them. Usually a variation on a star, all kinds could be seen, embroidered, cut out of fabric, or created from the panels of the hat.

Here's an original hat, with a well made six-pointed design:

And going to the opposite end of the spectrum, a five pointed star sewn onto the top:

For mine, I embroidered a ten-pointed star, inside of a circle. While certainly not as nice as the top example, it is still better than some of the others.

The entire hat. On the right, only slightly visible, is a silk ribbon. Many hats had a ribbon tied or sewn onto the side. A few hats had the name of the sailor's ship written upon the ribbon, but they were a small minority.

At some later date, I'll follow up this post with the rest of a sailor's uniform.

The second hat is not actually from the Civil War. In fact, it's not really even from the 19th century. This is a hat as worn by French Revolutionaries, and soldiers in the French Revolutionary Army in the 1790s. While most of the original hats were roughly shaped like this, time, wear, as well as supply all colluded to make no two hats exactly alike. Some are lined, some aren't. Some have silk ribbon, some don't. 

My particular hat is based off of this original hat. The only difference is that the original cockade is smaller, and the original uses hooks and eyes to hold up the brim. Original hats were put together in a few differnt ways. Some used hooks and eyes, others were sewn together to get their shape. Hooks and eyes, for whatever reason, weren't co-operating and giving the desired shape, so I ended up using thread instead.

 Nevertheless, my copy is relatively close, and certainly within the wide range of hat styles that existed.

Just as with the Navy flat cap, this hat is the beginning of a new impression, which in this case will actually encompass a few different impressions: Revolutionary Army infantry, National Guard infantry, as well as sans-culottes and other civilian groups. Stay tuned for more on that.