I am a bit of a science geek and have always loved geology, but my inspiration for my hat came from watching the recent BBC series called Earth with Chris Packham. This was reinforced by watching a segment on ITV’s Tour de France coverage where they featured the geology of a particular area the race was going through. Geology, the study of rocks, is a storybook of the history of the planet, of the crust that floats and changes and evolves on the surface of Earth. I wanted to recreate the layers of rock that had been shaped, distorted and manipulated by forces over time. The properties of using sinamay on the bias would assist in the curving and shaping but I needed something to attach them to, so I blocked a crown and two brims using the natural unstiffened sinamay straw. One brim was attached to the crown to make the hat base and it was on this that my warm, earth-coloured strips were sewn onto. I had no fixed plan as to how I would attach the strips and they were randomly attached as I went along, with the sinamay pulled, curved, layered and then sewn into place. Some had to be cut at angles at the ends to fit into spaces better. Once the entire hat was covered and all strips had been securely sewn down, there was a lot of multicoloured stitching on show from the underside. This is where the second brim and the lining were planned, intended to hide the stitching. The second brim was attached to the first at the edge using sinamay rolled over from the top brim, and then sewn to the crown with tiny stitches. The lining hid the stitching inside of the crown.

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