Yesterday | Advertorial | Carol Bergquist

“My hands said no before my heart did.” Why a 72-year-old seamstress from Michigan is putting her last Reindeer Hats on sale for the first and last time

Above an old hardware store in Calumet, Michigan, Verla Kettunen has sewn soft spotted winter hats for 40 years. Now arthritis has made the decision for her. On December 20 she turns off the sewing lamp for good – and her final collection is going for less than ever before.

Verla Kettunen (72) in her sewing room on Fifth Street. After 40 winters, these are her last hats.

Calumet, November. The wind comes off Lake Superior sideways, and the first real snow is already piled on the windowsill of the little sewing room above the old hardware store. Inside, the radiator knocks, the kettle is on, and the long cutting table is covered in caramel-colored faux fur with soft cream spots. On the wall hang brown paper patterns, worn soft at the edges. A brass thimble sits next to a tin of needles. Verla Kettunen has climbed these stairs every winter morning since 1986. This is the last time she will.

“I’m 72,” she says, and holds up her right hand. The thumb joint is swollen and slightly crooked. “It’s the arthritis. Faux fur has a thick knit backing, and every brim gets a few hundred stitches by hand. Last winter I needed an ice pack after two hats. This October I needed one after the first.” She rubs her knuckles and smiles a little. “My hands said no before my heart did.”

And it isn’t only her hands. “Nobody wants to learn this any more,” she says. “Young people buy their hats three to a pack. They don’t know what a hat feels like when somebody actually sat down and made it for them.”

40 winters, more than 11,000 hats – and a name she never chose

It started with a remnant bolt nobody wanted. In the fall of 1986, Verla found a roll of fawn-spotted faux fur in the bargain bin of a fabric store in Houghton. “It was ugly on the roll,” she laughs. “But I thought, that would make a warm little hat.” She sewed one with two small round ears for her daughter Kaija, who was three, just in time for the Christmas parade on Fifth Street.

Halfway down the street a little boy pointed and shouted: “She’s got a reindeer on her head!” By New Year’s, fourteen mothers had knocked on Verla’s door. “They’re fawn spots, of course. Reindeer don’t have spots,” she says. “Try telling that to forty years of Calumet kids.” The name stuck. Today the Reindeer Hat comes in three styles, and more than 11,000 of them have left this room.

Every brim is finished by hand. Verla still uses the brass thimble her mother brought from Finland.

What makes a Reindeer Hat so special

Fifth Street at 4 p.m.: snow blowing in off the lake – and one very warm head.

At first glance it is the spots. Soft cream dots on warm caramel, like a young deer at the edge of the woods. People stop strangers in the grocery store to ask about them. But Verla says the real secret is something you only notice when you hold one.

“I lay out every piece so the spots run the same way,” she explains. “If you just cut and sew, the pattern goes every which way and it looks like patchwork. Mine look like one little deer.” The faux fur is thick and plush but surprisingly light, so the hat doesn’t press down on your hair or give you a headache after an hour. You can squash it into a coat pocket, pull it out at the bus stop, and it springs right back into shape. And no real animal is involved – not one.

There are three styles. The Bucket Brim has a soft, wide brim that keeps snow and low winter sun out of your eyes. The Snow Cuff has a thick cream fur roll that you can pull down over your ears on the coldest mornings. And the Little Ears – the original from 1986 – is a snug round hat with two small ears on top. “That’s the one the grandmas buy for themselves and then pretend it’s for the grandkids,” Verla says with a wink.

“The girls who wore my hats in 1988 are mothers now”

Next to the door hangs a corkboard so crowded with photographs that you can no longer see the cork. Children on sleds. A bride in a Snow Cuff on a snowy church step. Two sisters in matching Little Ears at the Mackinac Bridge. Verla taps a faded picture from 1994: a girl of about six on a toboggan. “That’s Becky. Last year she ordered three hats – for her own daughters. She sent me this.” The new photo is pinned right underneath.

The reason the hats last that long is simple: time. Every Reindeer Hat starts as nine pieces cut by hand. The spots are lined up, the seams are sewn, the brim or cuff is stitched by hand, then the whole hat is steamed and brushed so the fur lies smooth. About five hours per hat. “A factory makes a thousand in that time,” Verla says. “I make one. But mine will still be on somebody’s head in 2040.”

The back room on Fifth Street: shelf after shelf of finished hats. They are the last ones Verla will ever sew.

Why this winter is the last one

On December 20, Verla will sweep the floor one more time, turn off the sewing lamp and lock the door. Her daughter Kaija lives in Minneapolis and has a career of her own. “There’s nobody to take over, and I won’t pretend there is,” Verla says. “You can’t learn this from a video. It takes years before the fur does what you want.”

On the shelves in the back room there are exactly 386 hats left. Her final collection. Instead of letting them sit in boxes, she has made a decision: for the first and last time, every hat goes on sale – at less than half of what she normally asks. “I don’t need to get rich off the last ones,” she says. “I want them on heads, not in a closet. On somebody’s mom at the bus stop, on a kid at the sledding hill.”

Her granddaughter Annika (21) handles the online side. “Annika set up everything with the computer. I sew, she clicks,” Verla laughs. “She tells me people in Texas are ordering them now. Texas! I told her they won’t need them. She said they’re buying them for their mothers up north.”

What sets Verla’s Reindeer Hats apart:

Before the first stitch: Verla lines up the spots and cuts every piece with her shears – never with a machine.

What customers say about their Reindeer Hat

A Christmas present that actually gets worn

Pam R. (52) from Escanaba gave her mother a Snow Cuff last Christmas. “Mom is 80 and she never wears anything I buy her. Too fussy, too warm, too something,” she says. “She put this one on at the table and didn’t take it off until dessert. Now she wears it to church every Sunday, and three of the ladies there have asked me for the address.”

A Reindeer Hat under the tree: for many families, the one present that gets used every single day.

Where can you get Verla’s Reindeer Hats?

Verla’s hats are only available through County Craft, an online shop that works with small, independent makers. Annika looks after Verla’s little corner of the shop. Only there will you get the original Reindeer Hats from Verla’s sewing room. Spotted lookalikes from mass production have started showing up on Amazon and the big shopping sites. From a distance they may look similar. Up close, and on a cold morning, they have nothing to do with Verla’s work.

Only until December 20 – then the sewing room closes

“By the 20th I’d like every last hat to have found a head,” Verla says, folding a Snow Cuff into tissue paper. “After that, it’s really over.” She looks out of the window at the snow on Fifth Street. “Forty winters. It was a good run.”

If you would like one of the original Reindeer Hats from Verla’s final collection, don’t wait too long. With the sale price and the Christmas rush, the remaining 386 hats are not expected to last until the 20th.

It is the last chance to own a real handmade winter hat from a woman who has sewn them for four decades – before the sewing lamp in Calumet goes out for good.

Our verdict

The Reindeer Hat is the kind of winter hat people fall for at first sight and then wear for years. It is sewn by hand in a little room in Calumet, it is warm without being heavy, and it has that soft, spotted charm that makes strangers smile at the bus stop.

A piece with real heart: thought through, carefully made, and with forty years of experience in every seam. Thank you, Verla!

Readers love their Reindeer Hats

Photos sent in by readers.