For my object of affection, I decided to recreate my favorite hat that I’ve had for almost 6 years. I chose this to recreate because I’ve had it for so long and you can tell – the colors are very faded (went from a deep navy to a faded purple/brown) and I’ve had many memories with it. It fits my head the best out of all the hats I own and is very soft and worn. Thus, I treated the surface as soft as possible. Because the object had to be paper mache, I had to make sure the material made it look soft, so I used yarn under some fabric that wasn’t attached all around to make it soft and somewhat moldable but still worked with the constraints of the project.
I dyed the fabric with grape mio, water, and a little bit of blue Hawaiian punch to get the perfect purple faded color and made it a little bit darker in some spots to get an uneven fade look. My intention with this was to recreate something that I use almost every day that will last me longer than this specific hat, while capturing this soft and worn feeling that I might forget one day in the future. Because of this, I now have a sort of replica of an everyday object that will not be around in 20 years, but I’ll still have this new object that’s somewhat of a snapshot of my favorite hat at this point in time. Even though my audience can’t get all of the memories that my actual hat has been through with me throughout the years, they can still feel the softness, flexibility, and worn features of this baseball cap through my recreation.
Peder Harvey Design 