Aal Ower Toorie Shetland Wool Week Hat Pattern

The patrons and hat design for Shetland Wool Week 2025 have been announced!

This year’s patrons are the Shetland Guild of Spinners, Knitters, Weavers & Dyers 

“The inspiration for our toorie came from visiting the highly popular Chris Morphet ‘Allover’ exhibition which ran from September 2024 to February 2025 at the Shetland Museum and Archives. The exhibition photographs clearly depict the strong design and vibrant colours of vintage Fair Isle knitwear and this is what we wanted to achieve in our hat design. Building on the allover theme we replicated a 1930s pattern from our Guild publication, A Shetlanders Fair Isle Graph Book, as the basis for our toorie. Our design is based on a diamond grid, making it a continuous allover design – horizontally, vertically and diagonally.

Colourway 1 attempts to recreate the colours in the book. We have named our hat the ‘Aal Ower Toorie’, not just to denote that it is based on an allover design, but also as a tribute to Guild members, who reside “aal ower” Shetland!

The hat has been designed by Rachel Hunteron behalf of the Guild using either eight orfive colours.

We hope this year’s hat will bring knitterstogether from far and wide, celebrating theenduring beauty of Fair Isle knitting.”

Aal Ower yarn packs are available here