The poke bonnet was fashionable at the beginning of the 19th century, and consisted of a small crown and wide brim to shade the face. From 1830 through to the 1840s, the shape of the brim became more tubular in shape and increased in size until the wearers face was only visible from directly in front.
The Gentleman’s Magazine proposed (tongue-in-cheek) the formation of a Female Convocation or Parliament in order “to regulate dress in all its changes and varieties” (1807). The author drew several comparisons between the all-male Parliament and its female counterpart, with particular mention of the poke-bonnet.
Men may act very perversely in questions of peace or war, but there would be little room for animosity in discussing the height of a turban, or the colour of a shawl; men may be warm on extending the militia, or increasing the army, but there would be more liberality in puckering a handkerchief, or gathering up a petticoat; in enacting a poke-bonnet, or proposing an amendment in the straw-hat bill; I have no doubt, indeed, that all the members would be so duly impressed with a sense of the importance of their office, as to discuss with most becoming temper, the dimensions of the square bust, the curvature of ringlets, the necessity of indispensibles, the side over which the veil is to fall, and the manner in which the dress should be broached on the shoulder, with every other circumstance of equal importance to captivate and conquer.
The Gentleman’s Magazine, Volume 100, January, 1807.
My Poke Bonnet
The materials you will need are:
- A straw hat (from a craft shop or second-hand shop)
- Material for the crown
- Material for the lining (chiffon, fine netting, silk or lace)
- Ribbon or bias binding, to bind the edges of the hat
- A small amount of cheap, thin craft ribbon
- Ribbon, lace, or feathers, to trim or decorate bonnet
- Thread, scissors, needle, pins, safety pin, sewing machine.
Step One
Begin by bending the straw hat in half to decide on the shape you want for your bonnet, and then cut the hat in half. My straw hat was quite small, only 25 cms in diameter.
Step Two
Bind the edges of the hat with bias binding or ribbon, using a needle and thread.
Step Three
Gather the lining material about 1cm from the selvedge edge. I used a thin voile, similar to chiffon, with a selvedge edge that was 1 metre long. Measure the width of the brim, from the brim edge to the base of the crown, and do a second line of gathering stitch that same distance from your first line of gathering stitch. You can see from the photo below that my two lines of gathering are approximately the width of the brim.
Step Four
Hand stitch the first line of gathering stitch to the binding on the inner edge of the brim, using a simple running stitch.
The second line of gathering stitching should rest along the base of the crown of the hat. Pull the gathering threads tighter to fit. You can attach this line of gathering to the base of the crown with a hot glue gun or some hand stitches, but I left it loose.
Step Five
The lining will now have a lot of fullness inside the hat. Trim it level with the bottom edge of the straw hat, and then bind the raw edge by hand sewing another piece of bias binding or ribbon along it to prevent fraying.
Step Six
For the crown of the hat, fold your piece of material (mine measured 45 cms x 60cms) lengthwise to form a rectangle. If you would like a more gathered crown, make your rectangle longer; alternatively, make it shorter if you would like an ungathered crown. In order to have a decently gathered crown, the length of your folded rectangle would need to be at least 2 times the circumference of the base of the crown of the hat.
Sew the short ends of the rectangle together to form a tube, leaving a small section (0.5 cms) unstitched closest to the folded edge. This will enable it to be gathered with ribbon in the next step.
Step Seven
Using a safety pin, thread a thin piece of craft ribbon inside the folded edges of the seam, so it comes out the other side. (It’s kind of like threading elastic in a waistband, except there is no casing for the ribbon. Not having a casing enables you to tightly close the crown.)
Then you can pull it tight and knot it so it forms the top of the bonnet.
Step Eight
If your crown is very loose on the straw hat, it will need to be gathered to fit. In order to hide the raw edge, you can either turn it under and sew it (as I did), or bind the edges with bias binding, ribbon or a long strip of fabric.
Step Nine
Sew two lines of gathering stitches and adjust the gathers to fit the base of the crown.
Pull it down over the base of the brim (where the nape of the neck would be) so it holds the hat in a bonnet shape. (Try it on at this stage, just to make sure it will fit your head!) Then, using a basic running stitch to attach the crown, hand sew through all layers.
Step Ten
Decorate the bonnet with ribbon, lace, feathers or other trims as you wish.
I used a craft straw hat that was 25 cms in diameter (designed for a doll, I imagine), so it was not large enough for me! The Intended Recipient, my youngest daughter, was duly impressed!
Tips:
- Buy a thimble!! I bled all over my bonnet several times!
- Use a foam head, as it will help you decide how best to shape your bonnet.
- Melt the ends of any ribbon with a match or cigarette lighter, which will stop them fraying everywhere. (Don’t set your bonnet alight though!)
- The more “invisible” your hand stitching, the better the result.
- Have fun creating!
I made these bonnets by following a tutorial given by The Oregon Regency Society. The author also gives alternative ways to construct a bonnet for those who are not sewers, and has another tutorial on making a Regency stovepipe bonnet.
I love historical fashions! They are my cup of tea!
Related Posts
How to use Ribbon to make Decorative Trim
An 18th Century Reproduction of a Sacque-back dress
Sources and Relevant Links
How to make a Regency Poke Bonnet, by The Oregon Regency Society
From the Neck Up: An Illustrated Guide to Hatmaking, By Denise Dreher – This is a great book on the different techniques required for successful millinery, and also includes a basic pattern guide to the various fashions in hats through history.
THANK YOU!!!!
Your Welcome! I hope I was helpful!? 🙂
Loving these tutorials, so clear and easy to follow! Keen to try!
That’s good! I was trying to have a balance between too much and too little information! Don’t hesitate to email me or post a comment if you have any questions when you try it out. Have fun! 🙂
We made them!! They turned out great!! Ours were a bit simpler than yours though 🙂
THANKS!!!!
No worries! I am so pleased for you! (It is rather exciting making bonnets, I think!)
They look fabulous Kel!
Can’t wait to decide on what colours I’m going to wear to the Jane Austen festival and start making my own!
Very exciting!!
So adorable! I wouldn’t have the skill to do this myself. Would you consider special orders?
They are pretty aren’t they! I would be happy to consider a special order, though it may cost a bit to post! It took me about a day to complete once I had all the materials.
Feel free to drop me an email about it. Just go to the Contact page to get the address.
Just made a black one for a Woman in Black fancy dress costume. Excellent – looks exactly right with a thin veil draped over the top to cover the face! Thank you!
Oh, that is wonderful! I am so pleased to hear of your success!
[…] How to Make a Regency Poke Bonnet in Ten Steps […]
Very clever! What a great idea. Thanks for posting your lovely photos and great hatmaking tips. A well written tutorial, nicely done. Keep up the good work. And thanks for sharing the info about my book From the Neck Up. It’s so fun to see what milliners are doing in the world of period hats.
From the Neck Up was the book that got me into hat-making! Though I haven’t ever felt skilful enough to build one from complete scratch yet, I would LOVE to do a millinery course one day to learn the more complicated techniques. It would be great to one day have matching period hats for all my period outfits!
Thank you for your comments!
Thanks for the instructions. I made a very Christmasy one and wore it for two outreach church teas and a Charles Dickens dinner over the weekend. It turned out great! I don’t know how to post a pic with my comment, but if you send me your email address I’ll be happy to send you a pic. I’m at snallen2003@yahoo.com Peace, Sharon
Lovely! So glad it worked well for you. My email address is on the Contact page. I would love to see a pic!
[…] So there you have it. I wonder if Polk Salad Annie wore a poke bonnet? Again, I thought the name for the bonnet came from it being a bit “baggy”. Here’s how to make your own! […]
great tutorial- I am about to start my own bonnet, but I am puzzled as to what happens to the bottom bit of the crown that isn’t stitched to the straw top. How do you know how much to gather it up? is it flat for this underneath area? etc.
thanks!!
On the ones I have done it turns out pretty flat in that area at the nape of the neck (even though I did gather it initially).
The gathered area of the crown should be gathered enough to fit well around your head (or around the place where you would normally wear your bonnet against your head). You can either try it on and adjust your gathers, or measure the circumference of this part of your head. If you wanted it to remain gathered underneath, I would do a line of normal stitching over the gathers (after it has been gathered to the required size). This will hold the gathers in place.
Does that help? Have fun creating Adrienne!
So it is just a hem on the inside edge? or bound? because the rest is stitched to the straw… ,
In my examples, the raw edge of the material for the crown has been folded over twice and machine sewn before being gathered and hand-sewn to the straw. So yes, the whole edge has been hemmed. Though you could always bind the raw edge if you prefer. You probably wouldn’t want to leave the edges raw, and I would not rely on the stitching to the straw to hold the raw edge under just by itself, as the stitches tended to be further apart because of the difficulty of hand-stitching through straw. (On reading back over my post, I did the hemming bit in Step Eight.)
Thank you!
I feel silly for asking this but, when you create a tube out of your fabric, do you sew both ends together or do you have them held together when you thread the ribbon(which seems a little less reasonable .o.)? Also, you mentioned leaving a portion near the edge not sewn, how would the ribbon go through properly? o: I honestly did not quite get steps six through eight.
Sorry about that! I also found this bit the hardest to understand when I was doing it too!
In “Step Six”, your piece of material should be folded lengthwise, so that you have a long rectangle with a fold down one of the longest edges. It is the two short edges of this long rectangle that need to be sewn together. (So the seam should have four layers of material in it.)
In the first picture in “Step Seven”, you can see where I have stitched the seam of the tube, leaving only a tiny bit near the fold-end unstitched (click on the picture to enlarge it). This will create your tube of material (the material should be doubled over with a fold at one opening of the tube and two raw edges at the other opening).
The ribbon is threaded through the tiny unstitched opening left in the seam and then continues to be threaded in between the two layers of material on the folded edge. (Leaving this tiny bit of the seam unstitched gives you an opening through which to thread the ribbon.) It is not like a normal casing for the ribbon, but when the ribbon is threaded around the entire folded edge (and back out of the other side of the seam) and then pulled tight, the folded opening of the tube should draw to a close to form the top of your crown. (This is the second picture in “Step Seven”, showing the two bits of ribbon sticking out of the seam allowance. Click on the pic to enlarge.) The ribbon is then tied in a knot to keep the crown closed.
You should now have something resembling a cap, with one open end of the tube (consisting of two layers with raw edges) and a closed end of a tube (which is the folded edge of the tube with the ribbon pulling it closed). “Step Eight” is about how to finish the raw edges of the open end of the tube (by turning under, or using a bias strip, etc…) and then gathering that edge to fit properly around your head/straw hat.
Does that help? 🙂
Yes, thank you. ^-^
You can also use fray away, or superglue, to keep anything from fraying.
Yes, I have been recently introduced to anti-fray liquids! Can’t think how I managed before.
[…] I followed the tutorial in this link: https://teainateacup.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/how-to-make-a-regency-poke-bonnet-in-ten-steps/ […]
This looks so cool. I can’t wait to make these.
I made one! It isn’t a poke bonnet though, but it looks great!
Please check out, and say what I did wrong, so I can do it better a next time!
You did a wonderful job! If you found the straw hat fell apart a bit or was a bit floppy or out of shape, you might need a sturdier hat to use next time. I love the blue material you used too. I look forward to seeing some of your next creations!
thank you. I’m making my own
Good luck and have fun!
[…] found several tutorials about the simplest way to make a bonnet from a standard straw hat (here’s the best one I found), and when I located a straw hat at my local vintage clothing store for the low, low price of $0.00 […]
Awesomely clever!
Thank you! I have come a long way in hat-making since then, but I do love these bonnets.
[…] Como fazer um bonnet a partir de um chapéu de palha […]
[…] Poke Bonnet Tutorial […]
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