Milliner Roisin Kelly started making hats as a hobby but after two and a half years hand-making her designs, it has become much more.

“I just became so addicted to it,” laughed Roisin. “I drive my husband mad as I would come up with an idea in the middle of the night and I’d have to switch on the light and write it down or else I’d forget about it.”

As a hairdresser-come-milliner, Roisin lives her life in colour, between colouring her client’s hair in the salon and experimenting with colour in her hat designs.

“I love messing around with colours and putting colours together that maybe nobody else would think would look good,” she said.

Roisin prides herself on making all her hat designs “from scratch”. Commenting on her process she said: “I start off with the sheet of material, I block it and then everything is hand sewn. All the trims and everything are hand sewn.”

She added: “My feathers as well, I get them raw as I like to dye them myself and shape and cut them.”

Of all the stages of the hat making process, Roisin said that blocking is her favourite.

“I love the blocking part which a lot of people would find very strange because it is probably the most difficult part,” she said.

Explaining what blocking a hat entails, Roisin said: “Blocking is where you get your fabric and you are then stretching and steaming that fabric over this block. It’s quite hard work and you have to pin it and then you have to treat it and leave it overnight.”

She continued: “I love it because I know that when that material comes off the block, I have the base of my hat.”

Noting that the Royal family have “basically kept the hat business going,” Roisin revealed that her millinery business had a brush with royalty last year when one of her hat designs was chosen to be exhibited at the Queen’s Birthday party in Italy. Roisin had submitted her hat as part of a competition run by the Milliner’s Guild and was one of 10 entries chosen to be showcased at the prestigious event.

“There were 3,000 guests and they had two nights, one was in Naples and the other was in Rome,” said Roisin. “It was hosted by the Embassy and the Department of International Trade. I wasn’t going to bother sending the piece off but I then thought ‘what have I got to lose.’ They picked 10 of us and I was the only one from Northern Ireland,” she added.

Although Roisin was unable to attend the event herself, she was delighted when she was sent photographs of Italian women trying on her hat and was thrilled to hear that her creation was sold at the event.

In the future Roisin hopes to have more opportunities to exhibit her work. She said: “I always try to get to London Hat week. It is running again in April time so I’ll definitely be going over for that and there will be a lot of exhibitions and competitions.”