Gaia, the greek goddess of earth and creator of life was my inspiration. She is the Earth element and the creator of life. The hat is designed to imagine creation with new sprouting shoots emerging from a green base, vines spreading and new leaves popping up.

I created a large green beret with two colours sinamay. This was blocked in the usual way.

The trimming was very time consuming – I used nagoire feathers and stripped them back to the spine with scissors and then individually wired each spine.

This means that it is quite easily to make adjustments to direction of the spines and also that they stick right up out of the beret. The white nagoire spines were left white, the green painted with acrylic paints and given a shimmer of glitter to add a little sparkle. The vines are made from two colours green crinoline tubing that is wired and then sewn down. This also allows them to raise up supported by the wire in places. The leaves are fashioned from offcuts. All the trimming is sewn down. The lining is a blocked lining, with a sewn oval at centre.

Note: Entries have been not been edited or proofread to protect the integrity of the maker's original meaning.