Inaugural Hobby Room Hat Project!

Hats, so many hats. What do you do
with them all?

It was an inevitable challenge to designing a new walk-in closet in 2012 -- there would need to be a place to store (and display) all my hats. Not just my straw hats, but my grandma Hester's mink pillbox hat, my Scarlett O'Hara costume hat, decorated with feathers that once belonged to said grandmother, and an assortment of other interesting lids that all were taking up space in my tiny 1862 farmhouse in Baltimore County. Where to put all these hats?

For five years after my new closet was completed, the hat issue remained unresolved. My hat collection took up space in a spare bedroom, covering the tops of portable hanger racks and other awkward surfaces. When I converted that bedroom into a hobby/craft room this summer, said hats went into another room, stacked on the floor like so many floppy Legos. I began to ruminate about a design idea I had imagined for the hats all along. I wanted to hang them, virtually upside down, from the sloped ceiling in my dressing room. But the manner in which to accomplish that proved elusive.

The answer came when I had an epiphany one sleepless night several weeks ago -- a half-round sphere, affixed to the sloping upper-level wall/ceiling of my Lincoln-era farmhouse, would serve as a perfect perch for storing and displaying each hat in my walk-in closet. They'd be on display but out of my way. What if I created French cleats to hold wooden spheres to the inverted slopes? My hats would snug around the spheres and there they'd be, up on the ceiling, but within easy reach.

My new hobby room was perfect for
bringing this project to fruition

My initial iteration of the "hat project"

I drew a sketch -- my project ideas always start with a sketch. Mollies could hold the wooden spheres to the lath and plaster walls. I started searching the internet for prefabricated half-dome wooden spheres. But the mighty internet did not deliver images of half-round wooden spheres. Instead, images of Styrofoam balls filled my screen.

Okay, so Styrofoam could work -- and would be a heckuva lot lighter in weight than wood, but Styrofoam degrades and flakes off with time and wear. I'd have to cover the balls in fabric to prevent their degradation.  And I couldn't use mollies to secure Styrofoam to the wall. It would have to be... Velcro!  Really strong Velcro. And really strong glue to hold the Velcro.

 Stretching the jersey fabric over the
Styrofoam balls while the glue was
tacky  was a bit challenging, but the
result was just what I'd hoped for

A plan was beginning to take shape. I counted my hats and ordered a half-dozen eight-inch diameter Styrofoam balls from an internet site. I paid a visit to Jo-Ann's Crafts and purchased several yards of stretchy black jersey fabric. I called a Velcro supplier and spoke with a very nice man who calculated exactly how much hook (in black) and loop (in white) Velcro I would need to make 12 custom hat receptacles. When the Styrofoam balls arrived, I sawed each in half with my serrated CutCo bread knife. Now I had 12 half-spheres.

So this became the very first project in my newly finished hobby room.  I laid several thicknesses of newspaper over my large worktable. I tested spray adhesive on the Styrofoam balls to make sure they were compatible. I measured the circumference of each of my hats, and then cut the Styrofoam spheres to that size, marking each with a small photo of the hat it was destined to display.

I marked a spot on the sloped ceiling
where I envisioned each hat would go

I watched an internet video about how to create a puppet's head by smoothing fabric over a Styrofoam ball and then created a prototype with the first Styrofoam ball, the fabric and the spray adhesive. So far, so good. I glued black hook fabric to the back of the ball. I stood on a ladder and marked the place on the sloped ceiling where I imagined each hat would go, and then glued white loop fabric to the spot on the wall.

Finally, this morning, all the glue was dry and it was time to position each hat onto its corresponding dome. Success!  My hats now make a decorative statement in my dressing room, are out of my way and yet easy to access.  Even a hard hat, given to me by the roofers who hit me twice this summer with flying nails and debris as they flung old shingles from my roof, has a place of distinction on my dressing room ceiling.

And voila!  My hats are on display but
out of the way.

My inaugural hobby room project was a smashing success! I am certain there will be many more.
Cheers,
Lynell

"A person carries off the hat. Hats are about emotion. It is all about how it makes you feel" ~ Philip Treacy