A post about adding felt decorative pieces and feathers.
Putting things on the hat
I was so excited about figuring out the look of the NeoPixel strip last week that I totally forgot to talk about soldering everything together. It was a pretty easy process. I sewed the Flora to the side of the hat (with a little glue on the back for added stability), soldered on the wires for the NeoPixel strip, and then used a clampy-hand-thing to secure each through-hole NeoPixel as I soldered them together. I tested that that my new NeoPixel jumble worked before soldering it to the Flora as well. No problems. Smooth sailing.
Fail of the Week
My initial design called for side-glow fiber optics edging felt shapes representing snowflakes and holly leaves. Even though I tried to work it out with two different kinds of fiber optic line, this was a no-go. No matter what I tried, it looked awful. After a few hours of trying to glue, sewing, and otherwise manipulate the fiber optic thread, I threw in the towel.
What then?
I still liked the idea of using felt pieces and feathers to disguise the Flora. So I went ahead and made a little Flora cover of felt that also covered the back two 5mm through-hole NeoPixels. When held against the hat, the felt diffused the light from behind in an interesting way. So I sewed some snap closures to secure it to the hat while still providing access to the board. But the "berries"--three 8mm through-hole Neopixels--ended up looking weird. So I disguised them as a feathery pouf and added some smaller feathery bits in the gaps to fully hide the electronics.
So the hat is done?
Nearly! I just need to tweak the code a bit. But I'm planning on wearing it to my company's Christmas party tonight.
