#hunter hat

Hunter Leather Hats (Bloodborne) by Svetliy Sudar Leather Arts Workshop

Cosplay by ▽ Miramarta & Muraki ▽ (photo: SEIPHOTO) We started working with our first Hunter hat in August 2015. And, we must admit, its design threw us several difficult tasks. Before that, we had never made a one-piece crown for hats, so this question caused a lot of debate between us about whether it was even worth making such a complex hat for cosplay… But in the end, it was persistence that…

i’ve been asked how i made my hunter hat so i’ll make a write-up here.

it’s made out of a lighter-weight veg-tan leather.

to make the cap/round part i soaked the leather in water for 20-30 minutes then wet-formed it around a bowl. make sure the bowl is big enough to fit your head+wig. this is really, really difficult and will result in some wrinkles unless you’re a professional leather worker. luckily the hat in the game is not perfect so don’t worry about it too much. keep pulling and stretching the leather and try to get it as smooth as possible around the bottom. again, i’m not a professional so i had to make a tuck/dart in the back of mine to take care of all the excess leather. luckily the back part of the sides will fold upward to cover most of this. let this dry overnight.

i don’t have a picture of the shape that makes the sides but it was something like this:

with a hole cut in the middle. the lines are cuts you make so you can fold those “prongs” up into the cap and glue them. i’d recommend patterning with craft foam first.

once you made your pattern with craft foam cut this out of the leather and then glue the prongs into the cap. make sure you have the correct side so that when you fold up the leather, the right side of the leather is facing outward.

after the glue dries (typically overnight) soak the bottom part in water again for 15-20 minutes. then wet form the shape. glue parts together as necessary (i only used glue in the back where the back side meets the cap). put rivets on the sides to hold the sides up to the cap.

after this part dries, dye the leather using whatever your preferred paint is. use whatever sealant you want on the dye. you can use beeswax to finish the edges of the hat too (but i wouldn’t recommend using them on the ‘feather’ part since it’s supposed to be ripped/torn). then i used sandpaper to weather the edges.