Sophea's New Hat and Lunch Bag

 

 

 

Sophea wanted baby chicks on her bucket hat and lunch bag.

 Fabric Depot  had about 30 choices so it was difficult to decide what a 5 year old would want.
I went with the quiet blue with the words, "peep, peep, peep"

 I love these Stearman biplane patches. The hats are reversible.

I thought about adding a chin strap and decided not to. Someone in blogland added straps that attached via  a buttonhole just above the brim on the side of the hats. I thought about it for all of 20 minutes but decided not to. Those straps would get taken off and put somewhere special or flop around when not attached and......one more thing.

I did attach a cross body strap. Re-purposed from some belts with d-rings, I saved these striped beltings for this very day! haha.
Still - you never see striped beltings at the fabric store so being thrifty is useful.

Still coming up with stuffing.
I'll ship them to Battleground tomorrow.

Ella's hat is here:

Formula 1  bag is here:

First bucket hat - too small for Sophea was here:

My niece still wants a bucket hat for gardening. I like the oval tops and most of the free adult bucket hats have round tops. I'll have to get out my thinking cap and do some circular maths and come up with something that will fit my head, thus, fitting her head. We run to big heads in our family.

Bucket Hats

My reluctant model, Rusty  -- he's so humiliated. 
He would rather eat this creation than wear it.

But Rusty is old and arthritic and can't get up easily so I won.


I saw this Bucket Hat recently on one of my sewing blogs and thought it would be nice if my great-nieces each had one for summer. This is a free pattern from Oliver & S.


I added a loop on each side to hold secret notes, flowers, pen, whatever.



And --- like all good kid's hats, it's reversible.

This pattern is a PDF pattern and I could not for the life of me, manage to get the 2" square to be 2 inches. I did all my usual computer tricks to get the pattern to print at the designers scale but failed.
The pattern kept printing out at 1 7/8". I upped the sizing trying to get a 21" circumference but even with 3/8" seams, the hat came out at 20 1/4" circumference. The pattern calls for 1/2" seams when 1/4" seams would have worked fine.

There is a lot of easing to be done to fit the sides to the top which could be because I couldn't get the proper print size or because there really is a lot of easing to  be done to attach the sides to the top. Which means a beginner sew-er would probably, inadvertently, get some small tucks going to disrupt the smooth oval of the top piece.

It's a short pattern at only 6 pages so it's not as irritating to me to print out in the usual pdf pattern way of having 49 pages  -- to arrange, tape and cut out.

I also changed the sewing order as the instructions had you do hand-sewing to attach the 'cap' to the brim when finishing. :-(
I made each hat - outer & lining, and then sewed them RST together at the outer brim leaving a hole to turn. I closed the hole while sewing the endless circle top-stitching.

But it's cute.
Even if my reluctant model is embarrassed.

It's being mailed today to do a head check for fit and then I will sew up two real bucket hats for my favorite practice-grandkids.

I just found this video. 
It's not so much funny as it's by guys who  are self-taught sew-ers.
How to do extra steps to make a bucket hat....
I especially like the "Sew 1mm away from edge..."
I swear they are sewing with a buttonhole foot....

Since you're still with me - you  might as well read the comments under the video (Youtube) to get a languagelingo lesson. "...Thanks, it's pretty dope!"