Apologies for the lack of entries lately. I really have been busy making things though. The first one I'll post is my new winter hat! I've been meaning to get around to felting a hat since last winter and last Friday I finally did. I have a friend from the KC Weaver's Guild that is an expert felter and makes hats to sell locally. She invited me down to her studio and gave me some tips and information that I didn't know about felting. She also has a huge collection of old hat forms and she let me borrow this one in the picture.
As you can see, my hat is unadorned at this point. I'm still thinking about how I want to embellish it. I know I want some color along the edge, to make the flare stand out. But I'm thinking of doing some intricate embroidery around it as a sort of band. I can't wait until it's cold weather to wear it, I am so happy with how it came out. Cloches always make me think of the 20's and girls with bob haircuts.
Oh, some notes about the felting: This hat is made straight from the carded wool fiber, it's not knitted first. The wool I used is a grey New Zealand wool and you can see that it's quite a bit more fuzzy than most felted wools. (Merino is the most popular to use for felting.) The whole process probably took me about 4 hours from start to finish-a very short project actually. But the felting is all done by hand and so it's a quite strenuous activity.
