Felting and Fiber Studio

I finally had a little time to begin working on a piece for the 2nd Quarter Challenge. Ann chose the Early Celtic art period and so I followed the links that she gave in her post. I didn’t realize there was a difference in later Celtic art (which is what I always think of when I think Celtic) and earlier art. I have been wanting to make a hat for a while now. Not sure why but I haven’t made one in quite a while so I decided I would research hats from the same time period and add an early Celtic design to the hat.

I found my design on the Ancient Celts site that Ann recommended. Then I researched hats in that same time period and found the Pileus. Now I am not sure that Celts wore this type of hat but it is from the same time period and was made from felt. It actually was worn by freed slaves and is conically shaped with no brim.

So here is a printout of the design, I used the bottom one. And then I enlarged it to fit the brim of my hat. I drew it by hand and then used permanent pen so I could see which line I was to follow.

As you can see from this closeup, I changed my lines as I went along, drawing with pencil first.

Here it is after cutting it out. And again, I didn’t follow all my pen lines. If I felt that I had drawn an area so it was too skinny, I cut to give it more width.

Here is the resist I am using for the hat and the design where it will go along the brim.

I then pinned it down to prefelt so I could cut it out.

I folded the prefelt into two layers so that I would have prefelt pattern all the way around the brim on the front and the back of the resist.

And here it is after I cut it all out. These hats traditionally are white with minimal decoration. So I am going to make the hat white too. So it will be white on white. If the pattern doesn’t show up well enough, I will do either hand stitching or machine stitching to outline the Celtic pattern.

The plan is to make the hat to prefelt stage and then stitch the cutout prefelt on to the hat to hold it in place better. I don’t want to have to worry about the pattern shifting around when I am felting it. So next time, I will hopefully show you the finished hat.