Few of us are blessed with the hat head. Hat HEAD, not hat hair. Yes, when you have a hat head, practically any hat looks great on your head. At an early age I fell in love with hats. The Easter bonnet that we would by every year. The sun bonnets that became so popular with Little House on the Prairie and Holly Hobby. Shopping at Harold's for wedding hats, an entire floor of hats! I would choose a hat & pick an outfit to go with it.
I love watching vintage movies just for the hat design. I love walking through markets & having stall owners go into their special stash for hats that work only on me. It was only nature that I would be drawn to make my own. I exhausted myself in trying to find instruction or workshops or even a textbook. Bless old ladies that pass on information. Eventually I got the knack of it started wearing them out and the weirdest thing happened- people liked them. My most memorable experience was at the Cherry Creek Art Festival. I went into a milliner's stall to look at her hats, put mine down on the table to try one on, a lady came up next to me, tried on my hat & asked the milliner's price! I was overjoyed and embarrassed at the same time.
My year of 'why not' all came with direction this summer. A thirty requests for my hats plus a friend lending me free studio space plus the Holiday Handmade equals action. I started with a few proto-types that I thought the general public would like. This way I would have something to muddle around in my mind while I worked on the Pret-a-Porter outfit. Once that was done I would do final designs for the Holiday Handmade submission...it was in the end of October like the last year.
Pret show was September 16th; September 17th I downloaded the prospectus for the show & I was in shock- the submission date was moved up to September 26th!! I spent every night in the studio working, not on final hats but mustering the proto-types to be presentable for photos. Good photos were a must, the prospectus laid out that the submission would be better if I had an Etsy site. So I hired a photographer & started searching for models. Oh models....I could only get one scheduled by the deadline...so we got creative and I too had to do some modeling:) These are some of the proto-types that are on my Etsy shop. My sister joined me & created some knitted baby hats that are adorable!
