ENLARGE PHOTO Staff photos by Bob Hammerstrom At age 11, not only has she been in a Broadway show, sung in the Peterborough Children’s Choir and played in an all-girls soccer league, but Sadie Rose Zavgren also started DoYouLikeMyHats.com, selling the unique headwear she makes through her own Web page. Order this photo

With great care, Sadie Rose Zavgren handcrafts striped fleece hats using a pattern she designed herself. Each hat takes about an hour and a half to make, and each one is a labor of love, a study in color and a testament to the craftsmanship of its maker.

In February, she began selling the handmade hats on her Web site, DoYouLikeMyHats.com, and in a little less than three months, she has sold more than 50 hats to customers from all over the U.S. and even as far away as the U.K.

She does all the sewing herself and handles all the financial aspects of the business, from ordering raw materials to shipping product. For now, she offers only her specially designed hats, though she may branch out to capes in the future. She certainly has plenty of time; after all, Sadie Rose Zavgren is only 11 years old.

An accomplished sewer by age 6, Sadie Rose developed the idea for the hats last holiday season when she was looking for gift ideas for her family. With the help of her sewing teacher, Ellen Morgan of Lincoln, Mass., Sadie Rose designed a hat that features a built-in scarf.

“At Christmastime, I needed presents for my family,” she recalls. “I decided to make really, really long hats. I went to Ellen and showed her my plan, and we made three of them. Then I came home and showed my mom. She loved them, so I decided to make more. I made one for almost everyone in my family,” she says.

Sadie uses high-quality, 200-weight fleece to make her long hats. The long part of the hat wraps around your neck to create the scarf.

The production process, she says, is relatively simple. First, she lays out all the pieces of fleece according to the color scheme she has selected. She pins the pieces of fleece together and, using an existing hat as a template, cuts the fleece to the desired hat size. She sews the stripes of colored fleece to form one single piece of fabric. She folds that piece over and sews the two sides together, inside out. Finally, she lines the head panel, which covers the head and ears, with soft, high-quality, 100-weight microfleece to add extra warmth and softness.

“I used to do that part by hand,” she says, “but now I doness.

“I used to do that part by hand,” she says, “but now I do it by machine because it’s faster. Then I turn the hat right side out and sew on the pompom.”

While Morgan helped her with the hat’s basic design, Sadie added the multi-colored pom-pom herself - for two reasons. First, she thought the pompom would “funk it up,” as she says, and second, she didn’t want to waste the leftover scraps of material.

Sadie uses a piece of thread, a needle and a button to make her special pompoms. She pulls all the scrap pieces of fleece one by one onto the thread and uses the button to hold them in place at the end.

The fun part, says Sadie Rose, is selecting the colors. She usually uses between eight and 12 colors per hat, though she’s also made hats with just one or two colors. She will arrange the colors according to the customer’s specification; the order form on her Web site lists several options, including striped dark colors, striped mixed colors, shades of orange, blue/purple, blue/turquoise, green, pink/red/orange or any combination of the customer’s choosing.

“My favorite color is orange,” she says. “I always wear orange. It’s such a brilliant color.”

Now she’s a bit partial to saffron as well. In February, Sadie Rose and her family traveled to New York City to see Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s installation, “The Gates,” a river of 7,503 saffron-colored panels that stretched across 23 miles of walkways through Central Park. Sadie Rose was so enamored with “The Gates,” she sent Christo an orange and saffron hat made especially for him.

At first, Sadie advertised her hats simply by wearing them.

“But then my mom, dad and I created the Web site,” she says, and business started booming. She has received orders from customers in Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Colorado, Massachusetts and Connecticut. At press time, she had just received an order from London, as well.

Many satisfied customers have sent Sadie pictures of themselves wearing her hats, and she has posted several of them on her Web site, doyoulikemyhats.com.

The name of the site - and, by extension, her business - is borrowed from a line in the Dr. Seuss book, “Go, Dog. Go!”

So how does a successful entrepreneur find time amid all the sewing and selling to go to school?

“We’ve been home schooling for two years now,” explains Sadie Rose. “It’s been really busy with all the hats and my business, but it fits into my school day.”

The financial aspects were easy to incorporate into her math curriculum, for example. Plus, she is learning the ins and outs of running a successful business, from marketing to managing inventory.

“When I started, my dad helped me out with the money,” she admits. “We bought a lot of fleece, so I haven’t had to buy a lot yet. But the next time I buy fleece, I will probably use my own money.”

Was Mom ever worried that juggling school and running a business would be too much for an 11-year-old to handle?

“Not for Sadie, no,” says her mother, Bridget Mooney. “She’s a very capable person. I thought it was great. Her older sisters are 25 and 22, and they think Sadie is amazing. They haven’t decided what they want to do yet.”

Doyoulikemyhats.com is not Sadie Rose’s first commercial enterprise. Two years ago, a family friend asked her to make the costumes for his upcoming cabaret show. Sadie made five dresses: four red dresses with sequined tops and silk bottoms and one silver dress in the same pattern. She received $90 per dress.

Add to that total the 50 hats Sadie Rose has sold since February. At $20 apiece, she now has more money that most kids her age. Just what does she plan to do with her earnings?

“I was really into politics this election,” she says, “and I went to a lot of speeches. A woman named Anita nominated me to go to the Congressional Youth Leadership Camp in Washington, D.C., and I’m thinking about going to that.

“My best friend moved to New Zealand for a year and a half, so I might go there, too. I was also thinking about going to Paris,” she says, before adding, “or I might save it for college.”

An ambitious young woman, Sadie Rose reports that she wants to be a fashion designer and an actress when she grows up, and she has already made inroads on both accounts.

In addition to her successful business, Sadie is also actively involved in Andy’s Summer Playhouse, a children’s theater group in Wilton. In October, she made her Broadway debut - yes, that Broadway - in “Pandora’s Box.” The show, produced by Andy’s alumni living in New York, ran for five nights at the John Houseman Theater on famed 42nd Street, and Sadie Rose played the title role.

“I will definitely do Andy’s again this summer,” confirms Sadie, “and in my spare time, I’ll be making hats. It will be exhausting, working with fleece all summer.”

Instead of developing a warm-weather product, Sadie will take the summer months to build up her inventory in anticipation of the coming holiday season. She is hoping to secure a sponsorship to sell her hats at the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen’s Fair in Sunapee from Aug. 7-15. Her goal is to finish 100 hats to bring to the fair.

Sadie Rose has three siblings, but sewing is really her forte. Eight-year-old sister Maggie sews a little but is more interested in her latest project, raising honeybees. The family has been taking classes on the proper way to handle bees and is expecting its first shipment of the insects at the end of the month.

For her part, Sadie is very happy in the fashion industry and has no plans to switch careers. “I’ll let Maggie handle the honeybees,” she says with a grimace.

Ask her about her hats though, and she’s all smiles. When asked why people should consider buying one of her handmade creations, she says, “Because my hats will keep you warm. And the colors will brighten up the whole world.”

ENLARGE PHOTO Staff photos by Bob Hammerstrom Working in her parents’ bedroom, Sadie Rose sews hats made out of fleece. Order this photo