Next up on the Stitching Experiments Project is another soft and squishy hat. This time in an interesting pink and green combo.
The body of the hat is knitted in the round in a simple 2×2 ribbing pattern. The lower edge of the brim has been worked with a round of single crochet. The hat is worked with yarn held double in two colorways, a light pink and a medium green. The yarn used is a fuzzy bulky weight made of alpaca, merino and polyamide.
The hat has a simple form and the ribbing itself is an excellent base for some embroidery. There were two ideas on my mind about how to work with this piece. First, I thought I could work with the ribbing lines and create a simple smocking pattern by stitching columns together. Second, I thought of adding some embroidery.
The first the idea had to be thrown out almost immediately due to fitting reasons. The hat has enough elasticity but is quite fitted and if I worked the smocking all around, the hat would end up too narrow and wouldn’t fit an adult’s head anymore.
So I focused on the embroidery. Because the hat is already marled, features two different colors and is already visually a little busy, I had difficulty finding a matching yarn color from the leftovers pile. I also had trouble finding a suitable yarn thickness for the (now) super bulky fabric. Everything was too thin. But I had some luck: among the leftovers there was this muted gold lace thread that featured also some metallic thread. This yarn has enough color contrast in color and shine in order to be visible on the existing fabric.
The next challenge was to find a suitable embroidery stitch. I tried many variations and all got visually lost on the super bulky fabric. Cross stitch, with it’s variable width, was the only one that seamed to let the gold lace really shine!
Cross stitches are worked over two purl stitches, with right side facing, along the purl columns of the ribbing. These span from the edge of the brim all the way to the top, where the stitches are decreased and the stitch columns become narrower.
After filling out all the purl columns with cross stitches, I also experimented with an additional idea: thick stem stitches on the center of the two knit stitches of the knit columns, each repetition of the stitch separated by two stitches vertically. I created the thickness by working over the same spot multiple times. This worked reasonably well, but was not visible enough, so I decided to complete this one column and not work the others. Now the hat has a “double dot stripe” which can be placed either in the front, side or back when worn.
The embroidery stitches do not impact the elasticity of the main knitted fabric because they are worked vertically, rather than horizontally. Therefore, the fit of the hat is not altered by these additions.
Even though I encountered some difficulties finding a modification that could work with this hat, I am happy with the solution and result. The effect is a lot more subtle than I anticipated, but I like it. This minor addition of gold Bling! gives an updated look to an already nice hat. 🙂
The Marled Hat is now available for purchase in my e-shop. 
