Onto the most fashionable element of Ötzi's ensemble: the hat.

Made of bear hide, the hat was made fluff-side-out. The overall shape is very simple - a dome for the dome.

Instead of measuring my head first, as I would advise for you, dear reader, I just went ahead and traced a bucket lid on some cheap felt and hoped for the best. You'll notice I traced slightly more than half of the lid - my idea here was to make a hat that would come down around the curve of the head and fit nice and snug.

This felt was just to test the form - and guess what, it worked great.

I decided to add ear-flaps. Why? To be honest, I had falsely remembered Ötzi's hat as having ear flaps. And, guess what, I wanted some ear flaps. After I finished this first hat, I made a second smaller hat with no ear flaps, a much more faithful design. Guess what? It ended up way less cool than this one.

After fitting the felt prototype onto my head, I traced the outline onto my sheep's hide. I triple-checked to make sure I was making two opposite shapes, instead of two left halves or two right halves.

You'll notice here that the ear flaps are about 1/3rd of the way across the width of the hat. Wearing the finished product, I think that is still a bit too close to the face. If I were advising you, and I am, I would advise you to push the ear flaps closer to the back of the head, maybe 1/4th or 1/5th of the way across the width of the hat-half.

Now sewing up the halves with some hemp fiber and a blunt sewing needle. A blunt needle is best for leatherwork, especially soft leather like this, because the holes should already be punched before stitching begins. Using a sharp needle leads to the creation of improvisational holes that are neither needed nor aesthetic.

Because of the excessive fluff of these pieces, I sewed the hat inside-out. I also only punched a few holes at a time, to make sure that both halves were aligned. I am sure there are tools or jigs or techniques to lay out all your holes perfectly, but I punched as I went and the result was excellent.

I used both ends of my thread to sew two overlapping whip stitches. Most of Ötzi's stitching was whip stitching, which is simple and strong. Two whip stitches going opposite directions creates an x-shaped stitch, which can be seen on some of Ötzi's gear and makes for a double-strong seam. Remember, the strength of a stitch doesn't come from how hard you tighten each loop, but from firm tension and steady repetition.

From the outside, the strong stitch and the forest of fluff means the seam is practically invisible.

Feeling good.

Pictured below: the earflapless hat.

You'll notice that I did not include the chin-strap from Ötzi's original hat in either of my designs. That's because chin-straps are geeky and looking like a total dork is outside the scope of this project.