Creating machine made hats was not my initial intention when I first looked into knitting about a year or so ago. I was interested in starting knitting almost a decade prior, however, procrastinated and never got rolling with it until after heart surgery and a visit to Iceland for a music festival (Airwaves) in 2015. After speaking with a gardening client this spring while working for Black Birch Landscaping Co, about the Icelandic sweater I was knitting, she mentioned I could have her knitting machines (yes plural) , because she was moving and hadn’t used them in years.

And so, many mistakes and setup issues later -like replacing the sponge bar stalled the process of creating a swatch which is pivotal to determining the outcome of a project whether it be a hat, blanket or whatever. The machine is now operational and my latest hat is a two color with a few errors. Not bad for an intial attempt.

It is my only two color hat and is actually designed to fold back almost like a rasta hat. Because it turned out too tight, I reinforced the seam in the back and folded the extra length of the hat back. It has since slackened a bit and I’ve grown fond of it. A minor repair in the back top part is needed, but nothing a few minutes of sewing can’t fix.

The top title picture are hats made following YouTube instruction videos by Roberta Rose Kelley on her bulky machine. I use, the Studio MOD 360. For yarn bigger than 2 ply, it is advised to skip every other needle. For the brown hat in the title picture, I did not do this. It put stress on the needles and fell apart on the last part for joining and sewing the hat together.


The two pictures belows of the white and grey hat as well as my 2ply cotton green hat are examples of skipping and non-skipping needles on the machine respectively. The white and grey hat has both cheap 4ply heart brand yarn and expensive peruivian wool that is also 4ply.Shortly, I may be creating another hat with all Peruvian wool. I do intend to sell these hats but only when the cost of making them becomes manageable.

Part of the problem is a hand sewn hat can take me 5 hours to finish. With bind off and a false ribbing on the green hats the time can be longer. Hourly wise it is not worth it to sell them. I am in the process of aligning myself with a person with a sewing machine. If I make several hats a day and send them along for sewing the cost may be lessened allowing me to sell the hats online or in local shops here in Maine. I did inquire at an embroidery shop the price of adding my own logo to a hat and the cost was $5 for each hat. I think, I will not do that and add a logo to a tag with contact and product info.

The illusion of a hat being a “machine made” product is that the creation is instantaneous and it isn’t. It is very difficult to get the tension right and much of the process is starting and stopping to do things manually. To complete a hat without mistakes is actually a rare occurence, for me at least.

I will illustrate with an update to the blog breaking down the list of how certain items are made with future projects I intend to work on. I’m very excited about taking on a kimono or a short modern kimono. After an intermediate level of producing hats, kimonos, etc an online commercial site will be examined. I might program a shop here on github with a custom domain and using liquid language developed by shopify.

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Future Project - Kimono on the Studio 360 knitting machine. Here is my board of kimonos pinned on pinterest: