The photo on the left is a bonnet in the McCord Museum in Canada. It uses the same ribbon for the ties, bows and trim. I have seen this in other 19th Century hats. In order to reproduce this for a bonnet I made to be similar to the McCord bonnet I had to come up with a way to make the twisted ribbon not right on the bonnet but free from the bonnet so I could add ialready twisted.
I did try to make the trim right on the hat by pinning down the end of a length of ribbon and just wrapping in a spiral and laying it down to form a flatten tube but it was just too difficult to keep regular. What I’m showing below is a method that worked well. I start with, in this case a 1″ wide ruler but, you can use a piece of non- corrugated cardboard (like cereal box cardboard) covered with plastic wrap. For the McCord bonnet I cut a 3/4″ by 18″ long piece of cardboard.
It takes about 1 and 1/2 times the length of ribbon at this 3″ wide ribbon width to get the length you need. For this bonnet it was a 17″ and a 29″ long piece so 25.5″ and 43.5″.
Start by clipping the corners to the support (ruler). First about 1″of one corner on the end of the ruler and the other corner along the side of the ruler. The ruler is about at a 40° angle. This side will be the back side.
Wrap the ribbon around the ruler by flipping the ruler while holding the ribbon with a little tension.
Keep wrapping this is showing the back side. Each time you flip the ruler you make half of a spiral.
Back to the front.
Now the distance of the spirals begins to show, If you think it’s too close then unwrap it and angle the ribbon at the start more.
At this point I have 4 full wraps.
At 6 wraps I reached the end of the ruler, I need more length so,
I pinned the back side to hold the spirals in place.
Then I could slip the ruler out about 1/2 its length.
I continued to wrap until I reached the end and added more pins.
Then I baste the length of all the wraps. Now it can be added to the hat.
The trim does retain alot of it’s bias stretch as now all the ribbon is on bias relative to it’s length. But to form tight corners you have to gather or make a tuck in the trim.
