Last September, Karen emailed us about the vast collection of novelty jester hats that her boyfriend had collected at various carnivals and festivals over the years. She wanted to know how she could reuse or recycle them as she hadn’t had much success giving them away.

Lots of people made suggestions – including trying to give them to local schools/drama groups/groups that did clowning classes or making them into a purse or tea cosy – but Karen loved Meg’s suggestion of turning them into bunting/pennants:

Last year I sent an email about novelty jester hats and of the suggestions was to make a string of decorative pennants, like the kind for birthdays (the upside down triangle). I did this and am pretty proud of the result!!

Oh very fun! Great work Karen – and thanks to Meg for the suggestion in the first place! :D

I do love to see what people are reusing and recycling – especially if they’ve been inspired by something on the site – so if you’ve reused/recycled anything in an interesting, clever or fun way, please do get in touch :)

Karen has emailed about her boyfriend’s hat collection:

When cleaning up I came across a lot of jester hats from my boyfriend (about two dozen). He has collected them over the years for free at carnival (we are from Holland). Giving them away hasn’t been succesful, and we don’t have freecycle nearby. So I was wondering if we could reuse them in some way. They are made of different kinds of fabric, some I can’t place (and there is nothing on the labels). Some are felted and some are fake velour I think.

Two dozen jester hats! That’s quite a collection! I really hope he knows to reduce from now on and not collect any more.

As for reuses, the felted ones may lend themselves to small felt craft projects – there are lots of felt brooches around these days and basic (but pretty) ones are quite easy to make (for example, these butterflies ones).

As for the velour ones, I have half a memory of seeing a cushion made out of novelty hats but no amount of Googling will confirm I didn’t just make that up in a cheese dream.

Any other suggestions?