The Flowered Lilac Pixie Hat Easter Bonnet

I got this hat in the fall, and have been saving it to wear at Easter. The Birthday Cake Hat and the Fortieth Birthday Hat that I wore the past two years are statement hats, as is common for the holiday. This year I opted for what I think is called a pixie hat

The hat came from the same Goodwill lot that contained the Camel Cloche, the Pink Turban Toque, the Brown Tweed Pillbox, and two other hats. I had been looking for a turban, so the turban toque caught my eye, but the hat that really intrigued me was this lilac one, with its strange dome shape. "That would make a perfect Easter hat," I thought. Yes, it was pastel purple and had flowers on it, but the kicker was its shape--it looks like a giant Easter egg. 

Of course, you can't assess condition very well at the online Goodwill, and so, because I had built up my hopes about this hat, I was disappointed when it arrived to find it worse for wear. It was dented and its top had obviously been crushed in its past.

Dented hat

I wondered if I could fix it.  I read up on restoring straw hats in my hatmaking book and watched demonstrations on YouTube.  They claimed you could restore the shape of a straw hat by steaming it, reshaping it, and letting it dry, so I decided to try with this hat.  I used a teakettle for a nice constant source of steam.  The hat book said that after steaming and reshaping, you should dry the hat on a hat block, the wooden form that milliners use to shape hats.

I don't have a hat block, and even if I did, I wouldn't have one for this hat's unusual dome shape. So I did the best I could, improvising with a bowl.​

My hat block--a bowl on a jar

Then I fired up the teakettle, ready to repair a hat in my kitchen. I held the hat so the steam hit the underside and gradually the straw became pliable. I smoothed the top, which previous crushes had made uneven.  I tugged at the dented side. The hat seemed to be working with me--it was like it remembered its former shape and wanted to be back in it. The hat book and blogs had said this process would occur because of the stiffener that had originally been used to shape it. I didn't believe it, though, until I saw it happen. 

When I had done the best I could, I put it on my makeshift hat block to dry. I was amazed at the improvement.

The drying hat

The dent was gone, the top a smooth egg shape again.  I left it to dry in the kitchen. 

This story doesn't have a completely happy ending, though. Because I didn't have the right shaped block to support the dome, as it dried, some of the unevenness returned. The dented side was fixed, because the bowl shaped it as it dried. But without support, the hat that had remembered its original shape also remembered the damage it had sustained. The dome puckered in the places it had been crushed. So, while the hat was much better than before the steam process, it was not as smooth as before it dried.

I suppose I could try again. Perhaps I could carve foam into the proper shape and use that as a block for the re-steamed hat. But this hat is likely older than I am, dating from the late fifties to early sixties. Like this hat, and people everywhere, I am carrying around my own record of damage, remembering crushing events despite how much support and care I've received in my life. I'm cutting this hat some slack and not expecting like-new perfection. 

However, though perfection is not possible, renewal is. As the hills turn green and the trees leaf out and the lilacs bloom, I'm reminded not to discount the power of the earth and people to be healed. Even a dented hat can find new life.