 |
Hat issues with new book
Posted on Friday, November 13 2009 by Emma in category Books I WAS browsing Amazon.co.uk recently to see if my new book was listed and I was very disappointed to see that someone had left a scathing review. Now it always hurts when you have put months into designing projects for a book and painstakingly writing instructions, only to have the work slated in its entirety. I usually think it better not to respond badly to criticism, but some of her points worried me and I felt I should address these. The person who wrote the review was complaining that she couldn’t get the hats in the book to fit her, which is a fair point and one I shall address below. However, to call the bags bland and boring and “not a patch” on those in the first book was very unfair. As always, for the latest book I tried to address people’s comments and include some bigger, more practical and less dressy styles, which I think I have done well. With the price of purse patterns ranging from $8 to $18, the book is worth the price tag for the eight bag patterns it contains alone. I stand by the quality of these designs and hope that those who to make them up will agree. The mistake I made in hindsight was to include hats in the book. As I point out in the text within the book, hats are always harder to make because you have to get them to “fit”. Anything that has to fit a body (in any place) has its own set of problems. The hats I designed were really pretty vintage-inspired styles (and different to any I have seen) so I wanted to share them in my book. However, head sizes can vary by up to 2 inches so it was impossible to put all sizes into the book. Then there is the issue of what fabric you make them in, how much stretch it has, the thickness etc. which makes a big difference to sizing, and the type of interfacings you use also causes big variations in size. There are too many variables! In the book, I do advise people to take their head measurement and make the band to fit their head. I also advise on making seams for the main hat bigger or smaller as necessary. In her “review” the woman in question says she pinned the hat and tried it on and it fell over her ears. Most of the hats in the book have a thick band or cuff, which when the hat is finished, will be turned to the inside lower edge of the hat, thus taking up at least another 2 inches or so all round. It is imperative that you make the hat band or grosgrain ribbon strip fit your head and ease the rest of the hat, or alter the seams slightly, to fit the band, and hence your head. A certain amount of common sense has to be assumed because space simply does not allow for every little detail to be included in every different hat pattern. A general section at the front of the book looks at these issues. As I mentioned before, the cuffs and bands take up a lot of the room on the inside of the hat when they are turned to the inside and the grosgrain band is applied (which in itself, can be tightened to take up to an inch out of the fullness). If you design a hat with the outside of the hat small rather than using the band to fit to the head, the styles will not be flattering to most head or face shapes (it will give you a pea head!). Fullness at the crown is generally more flattering. The sad thing is I am sure I will get more comments along the same lines because I stuck my neck out and included hats and “worn” items in this book. I have never had a problem with my bag patterns working, because they do not have to fit people. The other problem is that the book publisher would not allow me to use a real person to “model” the hats and accessories. I knew this was a mistake, but they were adamant that it had to fit the style of the first two books which were shot without models. I do agree with the reviewer that the items should have been shown on a real body to show how they fit and how lovely they can look on. In the end, I sent the publisher photographs of me wearing the hats so they could see how to photograph them to their best effect. However, some of the still-life shots in the book do not do them justice. Much as I hate photographs of myself, I have pasted some of these hat shots below to show that the patterns do work and fit. If you ignore me in them, I think they look quite good! I made them with the templates in the book and my head is about 22 inches and certainly not the size of a melon (as the reviewer said it would need to be to fill one of my hats!). Anyway, this has made up my mind to abandon the idea of creating any more hat patterns for public consumption. I will stick to the bag patterns from now on. It’s sad because the hat patterns are really nice and help create the overall period look and feel I aim for, but if they are going to be too difficult for people to understand, and people are not prepared to do the necessary to get them to fit (which is not unique to my hat patterns), I think I should leave well alone. Don’t get me wrong, I cannot afford to let reviewers deter me entirely (there will always be some people who are impossible to please) but I do try to take on board what people think so I can strive to make a better product in the future. At the end of the day, there are 25 projects in this book and I still stand by the fact that it is tremendous value for money, even if you only use the bag and jewellery/trim ideas. As I have said before, writing books is financially unrewarding and at times a thankless task. I would like to thank all those lovely people who have left great reviews of my first book on both amazon.com and amazon.co.uk and to those who continue to email me with their thoughts, good and bad, rather than plastering hurtful and often untrue or unfair comments on an international website where they will undoubtedly deter people from buying the books. If you have any comments you would like me to address, please email me via the form on the contact page or at emma@charliesaunt.com. I am always happy to hear from you and will certainly reply. In the meantime, here are the hats…..
|
||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
