Hello, my name is Karlis and this is my story: Up until the summer of 2018 I had absolutely no connection to making hats, or any piece of clothing to that matter. It's hard to tell the exact moment or reason, but an idea came to me: How a hat is made? So I started searching and exploring, watching and reading. But there wasn't a lot of information, so I just gathered bits and pieces and tried to fill in the blanks myself.
It was June 18th when I ordered my first hat body and piece of strings to block it. Can You guess where I blocked the very first "Hat"? It was on a flower pot!!! But despite the odd shape, it still resembled a hat. After that I tried to work around this problem: I tried different flower pots, but I also knew, that this was just a hobby, so I couldn't invest a lot of money, so I came up with the idea to just make the hat blocks myself - out of styrofoam.
When it comes to sewing machines, my wife is an expert. But for me that machine was as complicated as rocket science, so for the first half a year I only worked with thread and a needle, so it is entirely true when I say that I left my Blood, Sweat and Tears on the first hats I made. But eventually I started to learn and getting better with the machine, and it started to turn from my enemy into my friend.
But now after one and a half year, I am still very much just at the beginning of my journey. But I am extremely grateful for the things I have learned and the emotions hat making has given me. I love the feeling when you first encounter the hat body, at that moment I feel its personality and can make a vague feeling of how I want it to look in the end. The most important thing for me is to understand the person who will wear the hat, and during the process I am having a connection to his personality.
So follow me on my journey and let's see where it leads us!
