Shetland Textile Museum Exhibition 2015

I have the privilage to be part of this years exhibition at the Shetland Textile Museum. This year the museums display is entitled -  "Makers' Choice". The trustees asked individual Shetland makers to choose a piece from the Museums collection which they liked, or which "spoke" to them, or which they had been inspired by. Then those chosen pieces would be displayed beside a piece of work by the maker relating to that inspiration.

So off I went to take a look through the photos - and I found a small 'kep' (hat). 

What drew me to the hat was the colours - bright natural dyes, as well as the design. It is in what is called traditional colours but it seemed to me to have a different look than the usual combination.


The original has natural white and moorit and dyed colours of red from madder, two blue shades from indigo, and a yellow which could have been from a number of natural dye stuffs. The yarn is commercially spun lace weight yarn. There are some mistakes in the motifs but other than that the knitting is perfect.

My copy and 2 matching toorie hats, both in handspun yarn and natural dyed colours, which are now in the Museum for sale. 

















I knitted a copy of the hat and used madder for red, logwood for blue, and onion for yellow. My copy is in my handspun yarn but a thicker yarn than the original, so that my hat is bigger and I had to leave out one pattern repeat. My madder red is not as red as the original, and, as I have used logwood for the blues, the lighter blue is not the clear indigo blue but has a purplish tinge too it.

A bonus for me in finding this piece is that it was donated by Mavis Robertson, whom I had known from my school days.