Around here I’m just called the “hatlady”. And that’s what I do more of than anything else. Thousands of hats. It’s what I started out doing in May of 1996, and somehow it just stuck with me.
In the beginning it was a single-head machine stashed in a bedroom. And an inventory of hats parked in the dining room…who eats there, anyway? Through the course of time I began taking over more and more of the house until it was finally necessary to move to a new one, so I could build a special addition just for all my “stuff”. In the year 2000, after running out of space there, it was time to buy a commercial building in beautiful downtown Walsenburg (where’s that??) so I could live in my business instead of running the business out of my home. Which is really the same thing, isn’t it?
By that time, I had increased my capacity to two single-head machines and a four-head, and they ran me ragged keeping up with all of them for a number of years. In the spring of 2007, I sold my four-head in order to bring things down in scale, and enable me to spend the cash for a laser engraver/cutter machine. And ya know what? I still haven’t figured out what to do with it exactly, except play around burning things up. However, it’s terrific for applique work, so I guess I should do up some of those to show you, and put them on display here.
I no longer do retail caps through the website. Instead, I just do jobs for my locals, who have been with me forever. And I step in to do contract work for others in the industry when they need help. But you’re welcome to scroll through some of my files from years gone by. Everything offered here served me well at one point or another.
Since I still work alone – and every duty in the place is mine – whenever you send a message, it will come to me… the one and only. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks!
Janet Valdez
