Design This – Feathers for My Hat

An alchemy request on Etsy caught my attention because it involved working with feathers and I had some that I thought would complement the fabric of the hat in need of new adornment. It seems that the previous feathers used to adorn this gentleman’s fedora had fallen apart and new ones were being requested.

The first thing that I did was to pull together a few feathers and mock up an idea for my prospective customer to look at. After seeing my original design, he asked if I could address 5 specific thoughts that he had about it. I felt that I could address them and went back to my feather stash to come up with an improvement on the original design. It was a hit, so I got to work.

The feathers had to be trimmed to size and stitched together. Then floral tape was to be wrapped around the base to make it easier to attach the feathers to the hat band. The stitching turned out to be more challenging than usual in order to keep the feathers oriented correctly. I had to stitch some additional quill material into the base area to keep the feathers in place. I have found that feathers seem to have a mind of their own when it comes to securing them together. You have to work with their natural tendencies and even then, some shifting is likely to occur. This feather grouping stayed put very well when I stitched them up, however when I added the floral tape the spotted feather in the back decided it wanted to be on the right instead of the left of the blue feather. Luckily this was in keeping with one of the 5 design thoughts (a sweep to the right design) that my customer had originally had, so I didn’t fight with it.

My customer was nice enough to share a photo of his newly installed hat feathers so that I could see how well they complemented the fedora. I was very pleased with the outcome. I hope you agree. (Note: You will find this custom sold listing in my second shop, EclecticSkeptic, because I forgot that I was signed in there instead of EDCCollective when I bid.)