I made this hat for my husband.  It is knitted from llama hair that I bought at Pennsic.  I spun it on a drop spindle, single ply.

Through serendipity two awsome fiber events happened on the same day, Felt United and Cynnabar’s first Fiber Faire.  Felt United is a day that felters around the world make and display felt acording to a yearly theme.  Cynnabar’s Fiber Faire was the first SCA event where I was the Event Steward.  To celebrate both days at the same time I taught a felt hat making class and made this cute hat.

While I had the photography equipment set up I did a whole photo shoot of the hats I have at the moment.

I realized that since I’ve been making fezs since long before I started this blog and I think of them as rather common place, I don’t have any on the blog!  However they are an important part of Ottoman costuming.  Here are some examples of felt hats in Ottoman era art. (Sorry I neglected or take down sources, or maybe the places I found them did not offer sources, but I believe these are both from the 16th century and are from European artists who are depicting what they saw while in Turkey.)  Notice both the flat top fez variety and taller cone variety.  Most hats seemed to be a base for turbans, and I suspect many of the turbaned figures where you can’t see the hat still are wearing one under all of that turban.  And some hats are worn by themselves. 

Here are some examples of my hats.

I haven’t made any really tall and pointy hats like those in the paintings because I haven’t known anyone that wants to wear one like that.  Sometimes it can be hard to recreate some fashions that may seem a little silly to us modern folk.

I have to give credit to my husband for the pattern for this hat.  He first made one for himelf, then I made this one.  It is made of two sided, red and black felt.  It is cut of 4 identical pieces then hand stitched together.  Felt embroiders like a dream. 

I love it when customers give me artistic license.  He just said put some of that swirly stuff on it you like to do.  Cool!  I really do like doing spiral work.  Its very relaxing.  I love the process of joining one spiral to another.  Spiral designs work very well with felt because they are so organic and if they slide a bit during the felting process they still look like a spiral.   The hat was a bit tricky because it is made around a flat resist with a front and a backside.  I have pretty good spacial relations, but it was hard to visualize how the pattern wrapped around the other side.  It was hurting my brain.  Finally I looked at if from above so I could see both sides at once, and it all made sense then.