craftgrrl | hat tutorial!

I got a few requests for a tutorial on how to make that hat, so there's a picture heavy tutorial [complete with troubleshooting] behind the cut!

Start off with a sweater you don't want [my favorite is a grandpa sweater]. The looser knit the better, & you'll see why later.

Cut the sleeves off. I always like to leave the seams on [which side is your choice] to help cut back on fraying. Then cut off the neck trim & the trim around the bottom. When you cut those trims off, leave a little of the sweater part along with the trim; it's going to become a seam allowance later. Cut up the side seams.

You'll have a bunch of pieces, like that!

Okay next, you have to decide how big to make your pieces. If you look at the hat I made, I made six panels: two large & four small. You could really do any combination you want, but I personally like the one I did. It allows it to fall but still keeps some structure. My pieces ended up being about 11.5 inches tall. The bigger panels are seven inches wide, & the smaller panels are three. I just guesstimated this as I went though. I just gave you guys measurements to give you an estimate haha.

Okay, next, fold the piece of the sweater [front or back, whichever piece you decide to use] in half. This way you only have to cut half as many pieces & they're even. CFL pattern, for those of you who sew a lot. Draw out [or if you're kind of lazy like me, just guess] your triangle-ish shape & cut it from the sweater.

The girl I made this for wanted six small panels & one large one. So those are the three slices I cut for the small panels. Still with me? It's not hard, promise.

Cut the bottom part of the triangles so you actually have double the amount of pieces you cut.

This is me cutting the one large panel out. I cut the width of it, then folded it in half long-wise to make sure its slope was even on both sides. It's the piece on the left, if you're lost.

So if you open that piece that was on the left, it looks like that now! That's just easier for me to cut the pieces. Then just go ahead & trace that if you're doing more than one panel for symmetry.

Now, take one of the pieces & put another one next to it. Line up the edges/seams with the right sides together. You need to pay attention to your pattern if you're alternating big & small pieces. Like, for my mustard yellow hat, I sewed my four small pieces into two bigger panels, then sewed a small panel to a big panel & alternated it.

Now sew it up! It works best with a surger 'cause it stops the fraying the sweater might do & finishes your seams at once. If you don't have access to one, I'd leave extra room in the beginning to turn over your seams, although your material may not require it.

So it looks like that when you're finished with your first piece.

If you open up your seam, the inside looks like that.

Sew all of your other pieces together. You can do this in any order that you're comfortable with.

That's what the side with my wide piece looked like.

Okay, pay attention here! To get the finished edge, I used the collar from the sweater. You could also use the trim around the bottom. Take the trim & measure how much of it you want to use to make the hat fit around your head the way you want it to. Sew the end together [right sides together like always!].

We're going to drop that circle into the circle of the hat. It's easy, I promise!

Match the seam in the trim circle with one of the seams you want to make in the back of the hat. match it so the right sides are together! Arrange the circle so that the finished edge is on the inside of the hat & you're pinning the part you trimmed off to the unfinished edge of the hat. This way, when you stitch them together, the unfinished seams will be joined & seamed. Got it? Good. I knew you would.

Now, since the circle is smaller than the circumference of the hat, you're going to have to gather/pin tuck. It looks better if you make these evenly placed, so reach across the trim circle & hold your hand on the halfway mark. Do the same with the actual hat. Pin those two together. Do the same on the left & right sides. Now it's gonna be WAY easier to make even gathers. Pin everything in place, but be super careful not to lose pins in the sweater so you don't sew over them.

That's what I mean by gathering/pin-tucking if you needed a visual.

Sew the trim to the hat. Don't sew the opening closed, obviously.

See, you sew around the edge, not together. Most of you should know that, but just for clarification haha.

What your finished seam looks like [if it's surged, anyway].

If you lay it flat, it should look like that.

If you pull it right-side out, there's the finished product!

But wait! If your material is too stiff, it's going to stick out & make you look like an elf. Bad news!

Here's round two. I did two large panels to help keep the desired shape. To exaggerate it more, I made two of the smaller panels a little shorter as well.

Like I was talking about before, I sewed this one into bigger panels first.

Sew the whole thing together & attach the bottom trim again. A nice trick I'd suggest is to end up with two flat panels to sew together in the end [not just one small wedge], start at the opening, & sew straight around the top to the other side of the opening. Think like an upside-down "U" shape. This way, your seams are smooth at the top of the hat, & they'll get covered at the bottom when you attach the trim.