Chritsmas Mice: A Hat

In November I posted the beginnings of a hat project here. Today I thought I'd get around to posting the final product, which I wore proudly to work for a silly christmas hat themed event.

The hat is made with a piece of shaped buckram, covered in white felt. There is some stiff wire that I machine zig-zagged around the edge of the platform, then covered with a one-inch wide piece of white velvet ribbon. This thing is really heavy, it is mounted to a headband and also an alligator clip, and it still needs to be repositioned every hour or so. Not exactly a practical accessory! 

The 'snow' that the mice are sledding on is a twisted pile of various white trims including several different laces, ribbons, cord, a huge white rick-rack, a fake pearl string, pom-poms, sequins, and more - everything I could find in white, went on this hat! Although I am normally a huge hater of glitter, I even added glitter glue to this insanity.

Here are some closer images of the hat.

Detail showing the mice on the sled.

Almost as an afterthought, I added some downy feathers to the side of the sled, as if 'snow' was being kicked up by the sled. It has a pleasant fluttery movement as I move my head. The mice are made of an off-white silk noil, with scraps of vegetable tanned leather for the ears and tails. It's difficult to see in these photos, but the boots are made of a wool felt that has flecks of black and grey, and the mice's limbs are button-jointed with tiny vintage shell buttons. Their scarves are hand knit by me using thick embroidery thread and size 0 needles.

The mice lack faces. I don't know when this became a thing, but for some reason I have a hard time envisioning faces on miniatures like these. It's a bit creepy, but I like it that way.

The front of the hat.

I waffled over adding the net for a long time. I'm still not sure it was a good addition. The white plumes were added as an afterthought, because I thought the hat needed a bit more height.

The left side of the hat.

The wide white rick-rack forms almost a path over the 'snow-' I thought of it as a trail left behind by the sled.

The back of the hat.

The hat kicks up a bit from the head in the back - so naturally the underside is trimmed with lace ruffles and pompoms.

The right side of the hat.

The smaller mouse is curled around the bigger mouse, with its head tucked down onto the larger mouse's shoulder. Originally the larger mouse was going to be pointed off into the distance with both heads turned in that direction, but something was lost in translation from sketch to 3D object and it just didn't look right.