A weekend of blocking felt

It's official: I love blocking felt hats!

Last weekend I found myself for once with hardly any commitments so I spent a couple of lazy afternoons with a kettle, blocks and pins and turned out some little hats.

This is a copy of the one I made last year for a lovely colleague. I learned that although it helps a lot to have a vague idea to work towards, an exact copy is difficult and annoying! Felt just wants to move the way it wants to move, and that won't be the same twice in a row.

With some of the leftover felt from that one, I churned out a little pillbox hat. Don't have a pillpox block? Me neither. But I do have a cylindrical plastic pasta container. It worked like a charm. Just use rubber bands to hold the sides in place as you steam and stretch.

I want to move away from using feathers, but I've seen some beautiful vintage hats with felt feathers, and with a bit of guidance from this paper feather tutorial and pattern, I used some of the scraps from previous hats to make some.

This next one is from leftover felt too. It wasn't looking quite right without any trim, so I added some more feathers.

Another empty weekend is looming, expect more hats or soft toys or soft toys in hats!

Miniature Felt Napoleon Hat

I recently joined a little 'club' called "Six Months of Softies". Basically it's six soft toy patterns from six different designers, but they are new exclusive surprise patterns revealed and delivered once a month for six months, so it's exciting too! I'm a sucker for soft toys, what can I say? (Read about it here, if you are interested.)

The first pattern is from Shiny Happy World, where Wendi Gratz designs patterns specifically for beginners and also has a heap of video tutorials to go with her patterns. So when reading through the pattern, there will be links to videos as you might need them. You can ignore the stuff you already know, and check out the video for extra help on stuff you aren't good at or familiar with. I've picked up some good tips. I also love the way she writes. Cute little comments lie among the instructions to give you a little laugh.

The pattern is an elephant and a mouse, called Napoleon and Josephine. I've actually mostly made the elephant, but I need more stuffing, so I'll show you that one later. For now, I have the mouse.

As you can see, I decided to give him a little hat.

Want to make your own little felt bicorne for your mouse or another little toy?

It's super easy to make. Slightly more tricky to place, depending on the ears of your toy! Here's how:

1. Start with a circle of felt that is a suitable size for your toy. The diameter should be "shoulder width" or wider for a more exaggerated look. (I say "shoulder width" in inverted commas because often toys have no shoulders. This mouse doesn't even have arms.) Basically there will be two folds in the circle, making two segments slightly smaller than a semi-circle for the sides, and a narrow strip in the middle. Kind of like a stand-and-stuff taco.

2. Fold into taco shape, and pinch the sides in and fold them down a bit. Now, I had a go at actually steaming mine to help it keep that shape. I used a cheap craft felt from my stash, so it was only moderately successful, but it might be worth it, especially if you are making a larger hat. You can see my improvised blocking set up in these pictures.

I knew I was keeping that oversized novelty Christmas pencil for a reason.

Just like a taco!

If you haven't steamed any felt before, the idea is to hold it in steam and shape it when the steam has made it a bit more pliable, then keep it in place. Holding it above a kettle is the easiest way.

3. Embellish. I went with a little button and the edges of some wire-edged ribbon in gold and red. Google up some Napoleon pictures for plenty of ideas. Some paintings seemed to have a gold trim, others just a little cockade. Whatever you fancy. Googling other bicorne hats (or chapeau bras) will give you other embellishment ideas.

4. If necessary, also put a stitch in on the other side to hold the shape.

5. Attaching is a variable process depending on your toy. For the mouse here, I used a ladder-whip-mutant stitch to attach it behind one ear, across the top of the head, and in front of the other ear. Wiggling and squishing was required.

6. Celebrate with some fresh banana bread.

Step 6 is the best!

Now... who else can I put a little hat on?

Hat Makeover: Red Felt Cloche

This hat's story begins in 2008, still early times in my forays into millinery. The first classes I took were taught by Christine Thompson (of Christine's Millinery, check out her awesome stuff!) who also lives in the Blue Mountains. I took a class with her on drafting flat patterns in Rozelle or somewhere equally wacky, then discovered we both lived hours away from there, and about 20 minutes away from each other. The second course was at Christine's home studio (thank goodness!), and was on blocking felt. This was the hat I made in that class.

Since this was my first go at blocking, we stuck to a really simple cloche shape as I learned about the techniques. I was pretty excited about how nicely it matched my red coat!

Over time, however, I've gotten a little bored with it, and it also has a little hole in the felt at the front. You can't see the hole from a distance but up close you sure can.

At last year's International Millinery Forum I did a class on free-shaping felt hats with Watraud Reiner of Torb and Reiner. One of the other students had a felt hood with a hole right in the centre, and asked for advice for how to get around that issue. Waltraud took the felt, folded the fabric over the hole and worked from there. I felt like the class collectively dropped their jaws in amazement at the simpicity of this solution.

So after removing the binding from the edge, that's how I started too. Then I just played, folded, stretched, played and trimmed until I had this:

Here's a view of it flat, where you can see the back a bit and how the feather goes through to the other side.

A bit different huh? What do you think?

A Thank-You Hat

This year I was teaching 9 periods out-of-faculty. Even though this was in TAS, my first area of qualification, I haven't taught it for years, and hadn't taught any of the projects I was asked to teach. Suddenly in the workshop with classes in front of me and lots to learn, I was pretty well lost.

Luckily I had a colleague come to the rescue. Show me what to do. Come to my rescue with questions I couldn't answer or resources I couldn't find. Come into my class and help my students. Encourage, support, and inspire me.

Where would we be without colleagues like that.

So I wanted to make her something for Christmas. Something to show my gratitude and give her something my time and skill created, to pay for all the time and skill she shared with me.

Sorry for the photo. It was late at night when I finished and I had to gift it the next day. She loves it though, which is all that matters.

Halloween Finger Puppet Greeting Cards

I've been making some cards - something I haven't done for a while. I've been playing with the idea of cards with finger puppets, and since I was exploring Halloween ideas, I started with some Halloweeny ones.

I started with some owls. One of the big issues I had was coming up with how to attach the puppet to the card. Eventually I found these sticky puffy tab things in a card-making kit (you know the things that make the bits on the card stick out? Those. Turns out I had some) but I experimented with many other ideas, including paddle-pop sticks, as with this fat owl and his fence:

He is so fat.

Happy with the owls, I tried a pumpkin-headed man and a kid dressed as a devil.

I think in future I would do him either as just a jack-o-lantern without a body, or as a proper pumpkin-headed man with some arms. He looks a bit funny this way.

Poor devil kid's face. I didn't want to go to the effort of sewing on eyes and a mouth (especially the mouth) so I tested fabric pens. Unfortunately I tested them on one felt then used them on another, and it spread more on the face fabric. Oh well. He doesn't seem to mind.

I don't think the pictures I used are copyright free (they were from a Dover sampler but not from a clip-art book so probably not ok) so I can't try to sell them (plus apart from owl number one they all have issues, plus who buys Halloween greeting cards, plus who in Australia buys Halloween greeting cards...). I'll be giving these away to any of my friends who has someone to give them to. Then we can see if the puppet-card idea is a good one.

Also, this week's fabric of the week contest at Spoonflower is Zombie Plush Toys. Worth a look and a vote.