Sculpting a Jinsin hat at East Village Hats

Hello. This year one of my goals was to make another hat. (Important to set achievable goals entirely within your control.) I decided to take a class on Jinsin with Jasmine Zorlu, again at East Village Hats. Description: “Learn how to shape and sculpt Jinsin, a delightfully sculptural straw material, into your own sun hat or cocktail hat.

'Jinsin', also called 'buntal', is a fine fiber from stalks of unopened leaves of talipot palms grown in the Philippines and is handwoven there on wooden looms into flat yardage.” I had never heard of jinsin/buntal nor had I seen such a hat. I think it’s uncommon in the US. I don’t know when it became popular in millinery. I think parasisal and sinamay straw are more common for those flat woven fascinator style hats but I have to say, I just don’t really know. Anyway here we go on a sloppy little blog post that hopefully one day in my old age I will look back and laugh on because I have improved so much.

For this hat I wanted to go in with no expectations and see what the jinsin would do. This material was a whole different world to work with that the rabbit fur wool of the cloche I made, which was at least a pliable wool. Hat making feels very sculptural and physical/experiential and all about problem solving, and I come to it with expectations from sewing that are quickly proven wrong or irrelevant but occasionally still come in handy. I think I’m still so unaccustomed to jumping in to work without planning or a pattern.

Above is what I saw when I entered East Village Hats. Turbans, fascinators, and headbands made of jinsin! So pretty to me. I was really drawn to the platter / halo one I took a close-up photo of. Leather roses on top.

Here’s the jinsin in its initial state. It’s a stiff woven material. Both of the ones photo’d are striped jinsin strips on the warp woven with gold metallic thread on the weft so they are glittery. But it’s just a big flat woven thing, and then somehow we were supposed to manipulate it into a hat. Mine was like 40” by 36” (a yard) and I cut it down to 40” by 20”. This was so weird to me. At least the felt fur hoods in the cloche class looked a little like they could be a hat, this was just stiff fibers that were somehow supposed to become something else with no trimming. Also we had to finish the edges before we started because they fray instantly - you can see on the right side of the pink/orange striped jinsin that it was fraying rapidly. You can machine stitch a hem in, or use hem tape or grosgain ribbon to enclose it, or glue it down with PVA bookbinding glue, or hand stitch in an enclosed hem almost like a rolled hem but really more like folded over twice. I am sure you can imagine which one I chose (hand stitching in). but it’s interesting to have so many options in hatmaking, same as sewing but the options are very different. So by the first day, I had only hemmed the 2 long 40” sides (not necessary to hem the top and bottom). It takes pressing well.

After this I have basically no photos until the end. Jinsin was so hard to work with for me!! I felt very clumsy. You basically steam and spray down the full piece (you can even dunk it in water) to soften the fibers and then must work quickly and effectively to block the hat on the basic block before it dries. If you work with it too aggressively the fibers will snap and your work will be useless. I wanted to make a turban because it felt like a good way to practice blocking and molding and make it still very sculptural and get the height element to the hat.

I used the iron once I had the hat almost done to curve the edge pieces to look more organic. it reminds me of a palm frond or something, some kind of plant base or dying leaf or a lizard. A desert plant. I did a few stitches at key stress/connection points but it holds its shape well. I also sewed in the hatband by hand. It is definitely a weird and unusual hat which I’ll wear for Easter, probably not for too many other occasions but I definitely learned a lot. Now I have to plan an Easter dress to go with this one, work cut out for me.

It’s intimidating at times to think that anything can be a hat / hat can be anything, which is unlike clothes, which are more circumscribed or so it seems to me by needing for example to be made of fabric and fit on a human body. Which sometimes looking at certain hats, and the vast range of materials that make a hat, does not seem to be in the same realm. I guess that’s freeing. It’s really different from the clothes I admire in which the hardest work may be largely invisible but is still more obvious than the making or sculpting of a hat. Even the Balenciaga origami-esque coat I’m slogging through or any mysterious Miyake pattern I’ve sewn seems more conventional than even the most “regular” little turban I just made in a weekend.

OK, that’s all from me, good luck in my freshman year at hat school for wayward girls. Please don’t say mean things about my lovely and unique hat. I’ll have nicer photos in it on Easter, if you have ideas or find me a nice Halston dress pattern or gold-grounded fabric send them my way. love you like always. bye