Making hat stands using a model example.

Yesterday I received an order for three adult sized hat stands and three for children aged 5 and older. While I had three adult sized stands in my inventory, I had only one of size 5 to pre-teen on hand, so I wove two more.

Weaving with cane is always an adventure for me. The hat stand on the left was the one I had on hand. The others are the ones I wove today using that stand as a model. As you can see, though I used the same material and the same number of stakes for each stand, the results are somewhat variable. Each has a circumference of 20.5 inches, the upper limit for had stands for children from age five to pre-teen. Each began with three eight inch pieces of cane inserted through three more canes of similar length. Each then had 24 lengths of cane added on either side of the ends of the six starter canes. And each was domed to form the top of the hat stand. As you can see, the doming was a significant variable in each stand's appearance.

Each has 16 rows of 1/4" flat cane woven for its body structure. And each of these body shapes varies somewhat too. For the necks, I used the same technique to narrow and then widen the stands. With a twinning weave I wove round one stake, then around two, around one, then two all round the body, forcing the weave narrower with each round of weaving. To flair out, I used twinning weave around each separate stake. While the results are similar, there are variations.

I hope the person that ordered the stands likes a little variation.