Mad Hatter from Alice In Wonderland

[Mommabear]

Hello. I am in the process of making Johnny Depps Mad Hatter costume. In the Alice in Wonderland movie the Mad hatter had a variity of very simial costumes. I am making the one he wears at the end of the movie in the final battle. He is wearing a kilt with this one and I love it.

My version is not going to be screen accurate as I already have a lovely 7 meter kilt that I want to use with this and I am going to be doing a lot of stash busting for this one.

 

[Mommabear]

I had wanted to make this costume a few years ago but never got around to it so I have a few things already. I have the wig and hat pins and the scarf and the sporran (little purse thing worn with kilts). I had also already made the thread bandolier (sorry no pictures of making that). I just went to our Antique Warehouse and bought a few bags of wooded thread spools and put them together with chain I bought from Micheals.

The sporran that is for the costume has horse hair on it so I have to add that to mine and it should work just fine.
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[Mommabear]

The Hat! Of course one of the most important parts for the Mad Hatter is the iconic hat. I had a regular top hat in my stash so I started with that. I took poster board and cut it 23 inches wide and 9 1/2 inches high. I drew a 1 inch line at the top all the way across as that is what I would be over to create the top. I then cut i inch strips starting 4 inches from the bottom and cut all the way to the top. After cutting the strips I bent the one inch line to give me a platform for the top. This poster board I wrapped around the crown of the top hat. I took the top hat and traced the brim on other poster board and the trimed that all the way around by 1/2 inch, this gave me the top of the top hat. By taping the 1 inch strips from the new "crown" that I made to the top it gave the tapering out look that is so iconic for the Hatters top hat.
I was really happy with this height and shape so I did the old paper mache route to make it solid. 

The hat in the movie is made from laser cut green leather. I do not have that technology so that is why I made it this way. I am going to cover it with green material and black lace to give the "laser cut " look and then age it.

 

[tiggerrr]

I love hats. Can't wait to see how this turns out. I haven't done paper mache in decades now (ouch "decades" is a bad word), but it really is so useful.