beck's blog

Friday, November 05, 2010

Fezzes Are Cool

I've been needlepointing again.
I found another old kit on etsy by my favorite designer Judith Gross. (She created the awesome Peace Work needlepoint which I changed a little bit and made into a pillow.)

This kit was for a very wide, groovy belt and sort of shirt applique. Here's photos of the kit and what's left over from what I didn't use when I created my fez. (Yes, that's right. I said fez) Click on the photos to enlarge them).

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The belt was supposed to be about 4 inches wide. Good grief! There wasn't enough material to make a belt for a, let's say, aging child of the 60s either. Plus, I wasn't thrilled with that weird appliqued design that you were supposed to stitch and then sew onto a t-shirt. Ick!

So, I started on the belt thinking, what can I make out of this? It's too cool a design to NOT make it into something. Then I thought, "I know! A hat! The belt part could go around the head and the big appliqued part could be the top of the hat. YAY!!!!"

That's what I had in mind whilst working on this. It was difficult to fit the pieces together. The canvas is rather stiff to work with. But I managed to get it done despite my aching fingers. Here's it is folks. Lot's of pictures to follow...

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Let's see that's front, right side, left side, and two back shots.
The kit came with orangy colors and I added a lot of my own too. It's a very fall-colored hat.

Since I wanted it to look like a fez. I knew the tassel would be important. I looked through my jewelry box and found this really cute strawberry pendant/bead. It was perfect! Strawberries were very popular in the 70's.

For the front where a Shriner's fez would have had a curved sword, I found another old piece of jewelry in my box that I always thought was strange. It kind of looks like a wheat stalk on the top and at the bottom there's a red faceted bead that kind of looks like a cherry.

I sewed that to the front and attached the tassel to the middle so it could swing around. I also sewed tiny red beads in between some rickrack along the edge and in the middle of the fez but I don't think it shows up in the photos.

I found out a lot about fezzes while working on this by checking the web. There's a lot of interesting information on them.
Also, as some of you Doctor Who fans must already know, the Doctor himself briefly wore one himself, until his companions had a rather nasty reaction to it as seen here in a you tube clip....

"It's a fez. I wear a fez now. Fezzes are Cool."