Last week I showed you the beginnings of my second quarter challenge project here. The next step was to make the pileus hat to the prefelt stage.

This is the resist all set up and ready for wool.

I added two layers of wool on each side that were fairly heavy.

Then I wet it down, flipped over etc. to add all the layers of wool.

Once the resist was covered, it was time to begin rubbing. I could have rolled at this point but I don’t do much rolling any more. I did stick with cold water as I didn’t want the wool to felt too quickly. I only needed to get it so it was holding together.

So I rubbed and felted by hand working the edges carefully for a nice smooth felt.

Then I cut the resist out. The felt is still very soft and needed gentle handling.

After cutting, I refolded the hat in the opposite direction to check the edge and sure enough the corners needed to be trimmed. The indent in the center of this photo is the far edges on the photo above it. Since the resist curved up there, the cut wasn’t even all the way around.

So I just cut it off to make it more even. So I have the basic hat shape in prefelt form ready to apply the prefelt design. I will show you that on my next post.