Reviving the millinery tradition, my hats range from everyday, to derby day fabulous, to sculptural museum pieces that fancy themselves to be teapots. I start out with a standard millinery material that comes braided in hanks, often natural fibers like wheat straw and hemp braids. With much patience and skill, I pinch, pull, sew and can even weave the braid into complex shapes. Much of the shaping of my hats happens in the sewing process. A complete hat requires a combination of both hand and machine sewing, for which I restored an antique milliner’s machine myself. Hats are each hand blocked to refine the contours. It is fascinating how prosthetic a hat can be by the transference of form from hat to wearer; a hat not only changes the physical proportions of the body, but also mediates one's character and identity.