Autumn Leaves

A while ago I made a felt button hat decorated with green leaves, and I always planned to make an autumnal version and I finally managed to finish it.  I wanted them to be clearly linked in design, so I used the same button block, only this time in orange.  I used a maple leaf as my template for the felt leaves, as I've always loved the way maple leaves go such bright colours in the autumn. To make the leaves more lifelike I added free machine embroidered veins and shaped them to look slightly crumpled with one of my silk flowers shaping tools (which looks rather more like an instrument of torture!). Another of my favorite arts of autumn is seeing leaves blowing about in the wind, although certainly not having to sweep them all up, and I wanted to get a sense of movement into the leaves as if they were blowing in the breeze, so I had to create a wire armature to attach the leaves to,which was strong enough to support them without being too obvious or bulky.  I think that this is one of the best hats I've made as its such an unusual design and it too quite a number or experiments before I got the armature to work the way I wanted- but it does work!

Felt leaves and a button waiting to be put together.

Leaves pinned together and you can't see the armature!

Detail of the leaves.

The hat from behind.