Dana Rohde

A hat-trick in sports is rare – accomplishing three similar successes, especially consecutive ones within a limited period. In Dana Rohde’s shop, it’s a regular occurrence. 1.) She sometimes blends her own wool. 2.) She hand makes her own felt, and 3.) after creating her own material, she builds beautiful, custom hard-felt, you guessed it…hats.

“My felting process is a compilation of methods,” she said. “I lay the wool in layers on a flat form, add soap and water and begin the felting by gently rubbing the wet, soapy fibers with my hands. Then I rub it with a unique tool, a vintage Tupperware pitcher lid, increasing the pressure so the wool entangles to form felt.”

Following this, she tosses the felt on a table and rolls it in different directions in bubble wrap to begin what she calls the fulling process, which tightens and shrinks the material. “I complete the fulling process on a vintage glass washboard, to create a smaller, stronger form that will withstand the millinery process and produce a durable hat,” she said. She then creates her art by steaming the form and shaping it on a vintage wooden hat block.

Her hats sometimes begin with a button, another love of Dana’s, or a ribbon. “Sometimes a hat begins with a desired color, but it’s often a result of the wool that morphs in color during the felting process,” she said.

Dana prefers the unique colors she gets from wool roving made of colors she blends herself. To accentuate her art, she learned techniques of ribbon origami and cockades. “I also created my own way of curling wool scraps and integrating them and feathers,” she said, adding, “My embellishments are always hand sewn, not glued.”

Becoming a maker of hand-felted hats began with Dana’s love of sheep. “I became a shepherdess in 1997, after raising sheep for 18 years,” she said. During that time, she also co-owned a fiber arts business, dyeing and selling wool and marketing needle-felting tools and forms.

While she studied professional finishing techniques with internationally known felters and milliners, Dana said, “I am a self-taught needle felter and sometimes create two-dimensional landscapes, vessels, garments, and slippers; but I have always loved hats. I find joy in creating unique felted wool hats that are a warm and durable expression of both myself and the people who purchase them.”

Dana participates in numerous art shows, selling her hats in Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, and North Carolina – and she has a wall of awards from these events that recognize her extraordinary abilities in executing the art, the layers that go into it, and…the hat-trick.