Sunday, November 17, 2013

Hats

I made a passel of hats for Many Hands Gallery.  It gives me a chance to flex my right brain on several little projects at a time.  It's good for me to practice freeform sewing in quick-time; gets the juices flowing.

I don't know about you but I'm getting tired of the word creative.  But it's hard to come up with another way to describe what we do, right?  I just looked it up in Thesaurus, they didn't come up with any better words.

Anyway, off the point.  The point is, I got going on these little cashmere sweeties and had fun.  I use the sweaters that I can't use on larger garments.  And I also use colors that I don't think would work in larger garments.


I really had fun with this one.  But it took forever to make compared to the others.  These flowers are made with cashmere scraps that I stitched into with pearl cotton and added vintage buttons.  I swirled some...stuffed some.  I love all the color against the taupe background.  A few chiffon scarf scraps added in the background bring it all together.


Here's how I usually do my flowers.  I twist vintage fabric and silk scarves into little "rosettes".  More vintage buttons.  Gotta use them, I have trillions!


I over dyed this cashmere.  It was an off white that I dyed with green.  It's kinda camouflage.  The buttons are actually vintage mattress buttons.  You know, the coated metal ones that used to poke you in the butt?


This one is a tad "Miss Marple meets Little Lulu".  I can just envision the 50's coat that button came off of, can't you?  I think my grandmother had one.  The little striped bit is men's tie fabric.


This school bus yellow cashmere was given to me by a wonderful gal from Mendocino.  A hat is the perfect use.  Most of these fabrics were cut from vintage clothes.  The button is one I've never seen before, really unusual with some bas relief going on.

Heading back to the studio now to finish some sweaters.  More later!