Second Felt Hat

A while back I wrote about the first hat I made in the Dawn Edwards felted hat class, my rainbow tree fungus hat.  

During that class I also had time to felt another hat, but not to shape it.  Finally a couple weeks ago, I shaped it and finished it.  I was mostly tired of it being almost finished and unwearable!  I got as far as this during the class.  I felted it just like the other one I made, but it gave me a chance to learn to make cords and seed pods, additional techniques.  

After sitting around like that for months, I finally shaped it, with water and steam and pins.  It's meant to have some sore of folds in it, and I just wet it down and pinned it in place on my hat block.  I steamed it some, but my hat block is an inexpensive synthetic one so I couldn't steam too much.  But it worked and held it's shape so that was good!

The last step was to stitch peas into the seed pod.  I was supposed to have little felted balls to stitch in the two seed pods but I forgot to make any, so I used these two wooden beads instead.  The seed pod was fun to make, with lots of different colors of wool inside it.

And here I am wearing it!  You can't see the danglys very well in this selfie,  they're sort of wrapped around my neck.  It fits very well and is quite comfortable.  I think it's more wearable than the rainbow tree fungus hat, and I love the seed pods.

All in all my first forays into felting were successful and I learned a lot.  Enough that I think I can incorporate a bit of wet felting in my work if it seems necessary, but it's certainly not going to be my primary focus.  Unfortunately, between these two felt hats and the wonderful knit hats given to me by friends, I have more winter hats than winter to wear them in.