Small cute reversible hand made hat from scraps of fabric

Back in the 80s and again in the 90s this kind of small hat was everywhere. My first few I bought but then I started to make them. I even sold a few. Then I suppose I just got bored with wearing this style and I have not made one since the early 90s. 

But I have all this fabric left over from my projects and you know you can only make so many hairbands and scrunchies and pocket linings. Yes  all are very useful and you do lose the odd hairband or scrunchie in life but I have not only got a drawer full of hair bands and scrunchies I also have a plastic bag full of half made ones yet to be finished. I will keep them because as time passes I will make them as I need them but I am not so keen right now to add to what is already a rather large bag of half sewn hair ties. Then it struck me. Winter is coming. Why not make a hat. Not a big brimmed hat - though I do have the patterns for them, but one of these small and very useful easy to stowe in a bag or pocket hats.

 

 Brim down 90s style

 

Brim folded up at front 80s style!

To make one of these is pretty easy.  And I do like a challenge and the sewing of this intrigued me for a few days.

You cut a circle for the crown and strip to fit your head circumferance and then sew together. Join the strip to make it a circle before adding to the crown. Easy basic hat.

OR a clever way ( I think so anyway!) to make a reversible hat with minimal sewing:

 

So first to find a circle to use as the crown. Ikea sell mats for use in the kitchen for hot pans. They are made of cork and looking at them I reckoned they will be about the right size for my purpose. 

So yes not science here at all with regards to hat sizing. Its all done by eye and previous experience.

To make a reversible hat: You need two circles of fabric cut this size and in different fabrics. For a simple non-reversible hat just cut the one circle. 

I used a piece of my cotton lycra jersey skull fabric teamed with my cotton lycra sweatshirting and by sewing the hat as shown - leaving a  small gap for turning, I get a rather cleverly made hat I think.

So once you have your circles, measure your head circumferance.  Measure round the circle. If there is a huge difference you will either need a larger or a smaller circle. If not much difference so say maximum of about 1cm smaller then you can stretch your fabric to make it fit or ease it in if bigger. In fact my strip was the same size as the cicumferance of the circle and I was lucky because it fits great. 

This was just an experient though and its great it worked but I was really just having a play with scrap bits of fabric so if you have some very precious fabric you want to use for a hat I would first make a practice one to check it all fits ok.  Take photos of what you do and you have a really good record so its easy to repeat with your good fabric. Or to write a post for a blog etc.

I added 1cm seam allowance to the end of the strip of fabric. Then I joined the ends into a circle. Then pinned to the first half of fabric crown so in this case the same fabric as my strip. Then carefully I folded the strip which is now pinned to my first crown inside the circle and I pinned the second crown over it.

Unfortunately I never took photos of this. I will add them next time I make one of these which will be soon. Overlock very carefully round the outside leaving the last 3cm or so to turn the hat.

Now you shoudl have two circles with the brim ( strip) sandwiched between them on the inside of the sewn circles.

I have one side that is patterned and the other is grey sweatshirting ( with glitter!)

Turn them rightside out and you get this:

Sew up the hole used for turning. I have sewed because I cannot see another way to do this neatly. Unfortunately I find I still need to do some hand sewing! You need to sew both the different sides closed - so grey circle side ad the red circle side.

I only had to sew about 3cm by hand ( each side) to finish this so it was a very fast project.

And it fits perfectly!

I have another hat cut out and will eventually get that one sewn as well. I need to wait to find a fabric for the reverse of the crown first but I am sure I have something useable.

This took much longer to figure out how to make it so its better than my old versions from years ago than the actual cutting and sewing time, so its a very quick project to do if you wanted a hat for winter and of course you could make it without it being reversible so that would be even easier. I like the reversibleness of it. Saves space when storing. But if of course I lose it, I actually will lose both sides whereas if two different hats I would still have one of them. 

Photos of my hat:

Have a lovely week and I really wish you all have better weather than we ( in the Midlands UK) have right now because its very cold and raining and not at all like summer!

Have a great week and thanks for popping by my blog. See you next week,

Bracken

River Island pencil skirt copy tutorial.

I got an email from River Island this week and it featured this skirt in several different colours.  I fancied wearing this for summer but do not want to pay out £26 for this. Its an elasticated waisted skirt with a pull cord and self covered buttons.The buttons will be the problem for me. I do not have a kit to make them so will probably need to use normal buttons but this skirt seems otherwise pretty simple and very good for summer. Also ideally I want to make this this morning to wear later today to the local village Scarecrow fair that is a yearly event. Mine is just above ankle length which was intentional. You can make this any length though and its very easy so why buy one?

This is written whilst actually working out how to make it so please forgive the present tense in the text. I usually write in past tense but that is due to it already being made so its a historical project whereas this really was as being made.

I spent some time yesterday evening trying to work out how its made. I think it does have side seams but no real shaping. Its a pull-on tube skirt made from woven fabric. The buttons are just for looks ( I reckon because I have not popped into a store to check). I suspect there maybe mock button loops but I will find out later when I eventually get to River Island to have a better look at this skirt in the flesh - so to speak.

So my analysis of how to make it: 3 pieces.
Back, front right ( left in photos) and a smaller left panel then 9 buttons down the joining seam. Elastic round waist and a pull cord to secure and to make a feature. Easy? I reckon so.

Anyway I intend to have a go at making one of these.

Time to make this about 2 hours including cutting out.

You will need about 1m of 116cm wide fabric for a size UK 8-12 but more if you want it baggier or for a bigger size. A wider fabric will obviously make it easy to use these basic directions for a bigger size. This is a particularly narrow fabric. Most fabric I buy is about 140-160 wide.This is 116cm wide.  You also need 2.5cm wide elastic.

This version has a contrasting panel so you could even use some scraps for this skirt: 

So where to begin?

My fabric, that I am using is an orange spider print which I have owned for quite some time. It was an end of roll remnant that has a slightly faded bit where it was folded on the centre of it. I never realised when I bought it. It was off ebay and I gave the seller a very good review which had I realised there was a faded line through the middle I would not have done. It was still very cheap though for 4.5m so probably still worth it. I do not mind buying seconds so long as the seller is honest about it. I think it is a Rose and Hubble print from memory.

Being orange and light weight cotton I reckon it will make a really nice summer skirt.

So here is my design:

 

So I folded my fabric and cut it to 84cm in length, then cut in half down the fold. This means I have now cut out 2 rectangles 84cm long and 58cm wide. One of these is the skirt back. See diagrams above............

Then cut one of the rectangles in two so you have  2 smaller rectangles that are 39cm wide and 18 cm wide - this is the front. Both should still be 84cm long. I guessed where to cut the front so if you cut it slghtly narrower or wider would probably still work. The split though is off centre on the original design from RI.


A strip for the waistband - 10cm wide and 58 x 2 cm = 116cm long ( or the width of my fabric).
3 more strips for the waist tie or pull-cord. I will have to join these to get the length I need. Mine is quite long but from the photos o the River Island site so is the RTW version so this is up to you. You do not actually need the waist tie since it has an elastic waist.

Now to sew it up.

First sew up side seams. Then over lock them. Or zig zag, or even just leave raw.  Sew up the slightly off-centre front seam. I should have overlocked each bit here seperately cos you do not want them joined even in the overlocking cos that will make it harder to hem it. So ideally you want to finish the front edges first then sew up the seam which will be easier. I was just sussing out how to make this though. I sewed mine 31cm long from the top edge. It was a guess and worked, but check on yourself. It will need shortening or lengthening depending on your leg length etc. And of course depending on how much leg you want to show.

 Then I pinned the hem on the split. I suppose it would really be much neater to hem this with folding it over twice rather than overlocking but I am on limited time here and need to wear it in a couple of hours.

 Sew the centre split hem and press. Sew bottom hem. Pin waist band on. I pressed the centre hem of waistband in and left the opening open.

 

I butted the two ends together. You could be more professional but I am as I said rushing this......

Sew around the waistband to secure: 

 I then overlocked the top and the edges together for speed so its neat but not yet very strong. I also sewed just slightly to one side of the centre seam but it does not matter as you will see.........

 Topstitch the edge down. This makes it strong and stops you seeing the overlocking where the wasitband front is still open to receive your elastic and pullcord.

Now join the three rectangles of pullcord together. You could interface these. I didn't. I folded over twice to make strongish and then sewed on outside and folded the ends in for neatness as I went along. You could if you forget to fold in the ends just knot them. I have done this before and it looks OK. Trim all cottons so that when you thread the elastic and pullcord you do not get tangled.

Thread your elastic through the open ends and through the channel and secure it by sewing the ends together either by machine or by hand. Then over the top on the outside thread your pullcord. Then by putting the pullcord over the elastic you will nto see your elastic when wearing this.

You can just glimpse the elastic in the middle here under the pullcord but once worn will nto see this at all.

I then added some small black buttons which I have in my inherted button stash. These are OK because I have no time to buy more and they will look fine. Maybe not as good as the RI covered buttons but still OK and I do want to wear this in a couple of hours time. I only have 7 buttons so this must do. The RI skirt has 9 buttons. But then this is a very fast make and the button sewing is possibly the slowest bit of this skirt making. And the most tedious bit!

So here it is on

And my lovely dogs just had to get involved........

 

 I am happy - this is a good summer skirt made in about 2 hours, and a reasonable copy of the RI skirt I was sent via my emailnewslatter - at least from pictures on the website. I will try to pop into an RI store this weekend to see how similar it really is in real life and update this post once I find out. Either way its a fast simple to make skirt that is comfortable to wear, shows a bit of leg, costs very little depending on what fabric you use to make it, and I reckon could be made as a mini skirt or ankle length, and in just about any fabric - so denim, cord, or velvet for winter too. Seriously this is an easy make. Hope you enjoy.................

Bracken