This project took all of September to finish. That's a lot more embroidery than I was anticipating when I started. I forgot you had to do all the seams as well.
Of course I didn't follow the pattern to the letter...
I used DMC instead of Weeks Dye Works, converting colors by the expedient method of looking up the Weeks color on line and picking a color that captured the spirit from my DMC stash. I also used beads in place of the french knots, since I can't seem to french knot to save my life. And I ended up winging some of the patterns, the chalk I was using to mark the embroidery patterns kept rubbing off. For some of them I ended up going almost free-hand. The beaded "lavender" on the cone being the best example.
And I didn't used cotton velveteen ($10.49/yard) for the base, I used poly "craft" felt ($4.79/yrd) instead. Since I wasn't going to put a full cardboard bottom on the thing, for ease of storage, I cut a circle the size of the brim and sewed it on, turned it inside out through a slit cut in the middle of the felt, and topstitched around the edge of the brim and where the cone attached to the brim. Then I stuffed the cone, slid a piece of template plastic cut to fit the base of the cone in there, and slip stitched the slit in the felt closed. The felt won't unravel, the plastic will hold the stuffing in place, and the brim will fold down to fit in a storage box. And since it sits on my coffee table the brim doesn't have to be perfectly flat. (It sits flatter than it does in these pictures.
All in all I like it a lot. It was a big, complicated project for me, the kind of thing I wouldn't have attempted a few years back. But I decided to give it a go and it came out better than I expected. I am quite happy with Zelda's hat.
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