Making a wet-felted cloche hat (part 2)

I posted a week or so ago about a wet-felted cloche hat that I made in a workshop with the Ottawa Valley Spinners’ and Weavers’ Guild. It was wet-felted in a deep grey for the outside and a bright coral for the inside. I was surprised but not displeased by how they blended to make the outside more of a purple colour – lessons in colour theory! And the “hat band” is a layer of coral and yellow silk hankies felted into the fabric.

I had an idea how I wanted to finish it with some needle-felting and embroidered embellishments, but it took me a bit to find the time to do it. Which gave me plenty of time to fret that I would mess it up!

First I needle-felted a small sunflower. No process photos for this, as sometimes one must focus on the task instead of documenting the task if one is to ever get something done. I started by felting a little disk of brown corriedale, then made the petals one by one in a yellow-orange merino blend. I’m starting to be able to really feel the difference between the various types of wool as I work with them – the corriedale is much coarser than the merino. Making the sunflower was the work of just over an hour.

I was a little bit more anxious about starting work on the bee and its loopy embroidered trail across the hat. I’d been envisioning it from the time I started thinking about a cloche hat, and didn’t want to get it wrong. The bee is simply a pear-shaped but loonie-sized chunk of golden fibre from my friend Marla wrapped with stripes of black that had been lightly rolled before I felted them in place. I felted the gold about half way to the final texture I wanted, then finished when the black was in place. I wasn’t sure how to make the wings and was rooting through my stash looking for ideas when I found some long straight-ish natural grey-white fibres that I picked up somewhere along the way. They were a little more challenging to felt but the colour was perfect!

The embroidered dashed line representing the bee’s meandering path was the easiest part of all. The felt of the hat was lovely to stitch through, and I was just mindful in my needle placement so the stitches fell in reasonably similar dashes and spaces with a simple running stitch. I was looking for balance between the bee and flower with enough embroidery to decorate all sides of the hat without being too busy. I think I managed it pretty well.

Honestly, I’m in love with it and so pleased with myself. I try a lot of things and many of them work out, but few come so close to my initial vision. It’s whimsical and a bit silly, but not so much that I won’t wear it on a regular basis. I have an extraordinarily big head [insert fathead joke here] and hats don’t usually suit me, but I think this one really does!

The only thing I might have changed is making the sunflower a bit smaller. What’s lovely about felting is that I could pull it off if I wanted to (in addition to felting it, I’ve lightly stitched it in place with some leftover embroidery floss) but I think I’ll keep it as is.

You can see some of the other hats that were made in this workshop on the Felting and Fibre Studio blog.

What type of hat should I make next? This opens up a whole new world of hat wearing!