Felt Cowboy Hat

Cowboy hats come in a wide variety of materials such as straw, felt, leather and foam.  The traditionally most popular hat colors are white or black as in the old movies.  It made it easy to know who was a good guy or a bad guy.  Today you can get cowboy hats in all sorts of colors.

Cowboy hats for parties are very popular and cheap disposable ones are very convenient especially if things get a bit rowdie and there are a few accidents. There are a wide variety of colors. Foam hats are light and good for parties with multicolors available. You can measure your hat size from a simple table

As a fashion statement choosing the right color of hat to suit your complexion and style can be very effective.  Straw hats are light and airy and provide good protection from the sun but not so good in a downpour.  A felt hat is more durable but must be looked after carefully as it attracts dirt and is difficult to keep clean. That might be a good reason to choose black!  It is best to hold and adjust the  hat by the brim to help keep the shape.

A leather hat is very tough and could last a lifetime. The old timers lost in the desert could also eat them when starving! So the expression “I’ll eat my hat” might have a grain of truth in it.

The original “Boss of the plains” hat by John B. Stetson was available in brown beaver fur felt with its natural color and not the most  flattering to the female face but served a practical purpose. It is in hats for women that color really helps so that you can find a shade to match your outfit. Calamity Jane might have been content with borrowing one from a brother but girls today are spoiled for choice.

What  cowboy hat style sells best ? The flexible lightweight distressed raffia straws with shape-able brims are the most popular.

A color for your complexion
Johannes Itten of Germany noticed that your color is related to the four seasons. He divided women into spring, summer, autumn and winter types, and recommended color matching to suit.

For tips on finding your best color:

http://www.thechicfashionista.com/your-best-perfect-colors.html

This lady from the Old West looks really cool in her broad brimmed bonnet.

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Have you ever wondered what stamped strings are and why you ought to care? A felt cowboy hat should fit snugly on the head and feel comfortable and not dislodge when you move around. Where windy conditions can be expected to annoy the heck out of you a tighter fit could be advisable but not if it is too uncomfortable. An overly tight hat can cause headaches as it cuts the circulation.

The original Stetson cowboy hats were used by ranchers who often had to ride at top speed if the cattle had spooked and stampeded. The image of a horse rider at full gallop with his broad brimmed hat catching the wind like a sail is easy to imagine. A hat was an expensive cherished piece of headgear. They might have been tough but once on the ground and trodden on by a horse or cow that was that for the hat.

The practical solution was “stampede strings” cords to hold the hat in place. The strings are usually made from woven horse-hair or braided leather. There are two main styles. The looped-style stampede string needs a pair of grommets or awl holes on either side of the crown to allow the strings to be slipped through and then looped around the crown. When you have decided on the correct position, just behind your ears, remove the hat and carefully push the awl up through the felt close to the band to make a small hole. The end loop is slid tightly through and fixed. Same on the other side so they hang down either side of the face about the ears to near the waist. A slip knot or toggle tightens them and holds the hat fast in the wind. The cotter pin stampede string slips in to the side of the sweat band and is held behind it.

A very practical purpose brought about the stamped strings but nowadays they can also be seen as a fashion accessory. Some are very ornate with fancy tassels.

They are also useful when riding through overhanging scrub and branches but be careful the hat doesn’t catch and the strings tighten around your neck. You don’t want to be responsible for your own lynching. They can also stop frisky friends or enemies from knocking your prized felt cowboy hat off for a laugh. Not a wise thing to do if they want to remain healthy!

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A felt cowboy hat can last a long time if it is treated carefully and cleaned regularly but what do you do with it when its days of rodeo riding, cow-punching or looking cool at the local shindig are well and truly over? Throw it in the trash can? Spin it out the window? Feed it to the hogs?

Well, these are alternatives to the sensible option of recycling. A felt hat is made of, you guessed it, felt, and what is felt made from? Animal fur. Beaver, rabbit, chinchilla, wool, buffalo all once ran wild and free in some green pasture and are totally organic. The fibers were gathered, pounded, steamed and rolled then shrunk to make an ideal, strong, light material for hats. The whole purpose of recycling is to return stuff to Nature where it came from.

Felt is organic so it will rot down on a compost heap and go back to its basic mulch state of molecules and minerals that can feed a sturdy new plant. That plant can be eaten by a beaver, rabbit or buffalo and become part of its fur. That fur can be gathered and turned into felt. So your old felt cowboy hat can have a new life over and over again. Kinda grabs the heart don’t it?

If you want to use the compost from your redundant felt cowboy hat for food production it would be wise to consider the dye or other chemicals that might have been used on it, and whether it getting into your food chain is a good thing or not. Dyes can be harmful if swallowed. The manufacturer might be able to advise you here.

Another way to recycle is to consider what other purpose you could put a hat to. Some folks with a quirky sense of style will fill the crown with compost and grow flowers, something like a hanging basket. Others use them to scare the crows. With a bit of modification a Halloween costume might give a redundant old hat a new purpose.

Cutting the hat up into shapes makes for fun projects for kids. You can make flower and animal outlines to add decorative touches wherever needed. Sew or glue on. A glue gun can be a very handy tool if you use a lot of small fiddly bits of felt but be wary if kids are around.

Whatever you decide, I’m sure you can’t wait to buy another stylish, felt, cowboy hat and begin the whole cycle all over again.

Annie Oakely, the famous western sharpshooter, with her long flowing hair topped with a fetching felt cowboy hat.

Have you ever looked in a store window at a display of the many styles of felt cowboy hat, and wondered how they got there, and where the material came from? How is a cowboy hat made? If you ever asked such a question this primer will give you all the necessary answers.

Felt is produced from a variety of fibres of animal origin. The original Stetson cowboy hat was made from beaver fur as it is warm and very water repellent. Today, many hats are still made from this water-loving animal often with rabbit or wild hare fur added. Chinchilla and other rodents are used depending on quality and price factors. The cheaper hats use widely available low-cost wool and tough ones can be fashioned from that icon of the American plains – the buffalo.

The best fibres come from the underside or belly of the chosen species. These animal fibres have microscopic scales or hooks that enable then to cling to each other and form a strong fibrous mat when steamed and pounded. The mass is compressed with rollers to form thin strong sheets of felt. This can be colored any shade required with dyes.

For hat making, pieces of felt are formed into a cone shape in a forming machine. The three-foot cone is peeled off and undergoes shrinking in hot water by about a third. A repeat process of dipping and pressure rolling ensures a strong hat-making material. At this stage it undergoes dying, and is cut to a rough hat shape.

Soaking and tipping (with a fingers-like machine) stretches the crown, and brimming stretches the brim. Wet blocking sets the basic hat shape before it is dried and sanded. These rough bodies are sent to a finishing plant to be sorted for quality, brim and crown dimensions, and basic head sizes. Internal linings, leather sweatbands and crown bands to match are chosen.

The rough hat bodies get their first blocking. They are steam blocked then a wooden block of American poplar is forced into the crown to set crown height and head size. The brim-stiffening machine comes next where dilute shellac solution is applied to the brim which is then flanged. The next step is air drying and a second blocking. The brims are now pressed flat in the brim-plate machines.

The finishing steps involve an application of hatter’s grease and “pouncing” or sanding. The more sanding the greater the quality of finish. This creates the “nap” that you can feel if you run your fingers along a hat surface – there is more resistance in one direction than another. The crown is pressed and the brim flanged to set their shape. The leather sweatband, lining and headband are sewn into place. Hot blocking sets the leather smooth.

Some companies specialise in custom made felt cowboy hats and they use machinery that was in use at the time of the Civil War. This produces a high quality hat made to fit your exact head size.

The finished felt cowboy hats are carefully packed into boxes and sent to the store where they are proudly displayed in the window.

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