Felted Hat Class: Dawn Edwards Class

I mentioned a couple of times that I took a two-day felted hat class at the Art Loft in Guthrie, OK with visiting felter Dawn Edwards.  I didn't know much at all about felting, and thought that the class would be a great chance to learn about the felting process and about how to make dimensional felted creations.  Dawn's work is beautiful,  here are just a few of the gorgeous hats she brought as examples.

She brought resists for a bunch of the different shapes of hats, and I picked two that seemed fairly complicated in an attempt to learn as many techniques as I could.  We used merino wool roving for the body of the hats, and then could add in whatever extra stuff we wanted.    I brought some hand-dyed silk to incorporate into one of my hats.  Here are a few pictures as I was laying out my first hat.

After laying out came felting,  lots and lots of rolling back and forth in towels and bubble wrap, then squishing and squeezing until it shrank up enough to fit. 

 Finally we started to sculpt it.  First Dawn put the hat on an electric steaming hat block to steam it.  She said this relaxes the fibers and helps it get a nice round shape.  Then we just shaped away.  We all had pinnable synthetic hat blocks for the class so there was something to rest the hats on for sculpting.  Here's my first hat, and me wearing it with Dawn.  I was trying to make the "tree fungus" hat like Dawn's (third picture) and mine came out ok, though not quite as ruffly as I would have liked.  In any event, it will definitely keep my head warm this winter!

I started a second hat in class but I haven't finished it yet (several months later), so I'll have to blog about it in a separate post.  It used a few different techniques so I could learn to make long dangly bits and seed pods.  More on that in the future!

The class was a really great experience.  Dawn was a good teacher, and did a good job helping everybody make their hats.  I definitely learned a ton about felting!