Felt hats

Felt hats by its production technology can be divided into:

• Solid felted ala-kyiz hats: a pattern is put with wool fibers and felted by wet felting

• Stitched hats: hat details are cut out of sheet felt

Process of making stitched felt hats.

Cutter cuts out fabricated parts by hat patterns of necessary size and model:

then it goes to production facility of embroidery. Here embroiderer master selects fiber according to special table of color and embroider on a tambour machine according to fixed pattern, preliminarily making ornament on a fabricated part with a chalk

The next step is gathering of details and finishing products with hand embroidery (“tambour dot”, etc.)

A form is given on a special hat block with the help of smoothing iron:

A backing cloth (cotton) is dyed in a tone of felt of which product is made. The backing cloth is stitch from inside of hat by hand.

Master stitches a label and steams finally the finished product according to the size on a hat block.

To fix precise size for hats is impossible because they have a feature to stretch out when use. That’s why the size is given for two neighboring sizes like 57-58, 59-60 and etc.

Ala-kyiz solid felted hats are made in wet felting technique. First, wool is laid out on a mould then pattern is felted and the last step is reworking till it gets final form and size on a hat block:

Moreover, dyed wool passes three steps of wet heat processing where surplus of dye is washed out then further color of wool will not washed while processing. Process of production of ala-kyiz hats is very hard and long. Nevertheless, a result makes happy as each product combines qualitative basic material, idea of designer and individual mastership of the craftsman, warm of his hands and positive energy without which it is impossible to work with felt.

Federova E.G.