The perfect, ruined, somewhat salvaged hat

Do you ever make something really amazing and then completely ruin it with one last little step? A step that turns out to have been completely unnecessary anyway.

Well I do. Surprisingly frequently.

Here's the only in-progress photo I have of my LUCCA hat. The pattern is by Susanne Muller, here, on Ravelry. I had, I thought, just enough of the lovely tan Modofil paper raffia in my stash.

I made the larger size and it was coming along really well. The instructions for steam shaping are great, I was getting excited.....

And then I got to the point photographed above and realised I didn't have enough raffia*. I spent a few nights scouring the internet and the only place I could find it available for sale was in the states and a $25 cone of raffia was going to cost me another $40 to post. Despair.

* to be fair, the pattern does state that for the larger size you'd need more than one 100g cone of raffia.

So I sent a begging email to Cass at String Harvest and, HOORAY, she did have a cone in her own stash that was not on the shop's website. Glee! She posted it to me, it arrived and was even the same colour batch number, and I was off and crocheting again.

The brim is supported by some plastic hat wire that I got from The Millinery Hub along with some Petersham ribbon to sew a band.

It fit perfectly. Securely enough not to blow off in a wind, but comfortable enough not to stretch or distort when worn. I am so awesome. My hat is so great.

Then came that "extra bit"....

I decided it needed to be stiffer and so I carelessly started slapping hat stiffener onto it. It instantly stained a horrible dark, uneven colour. Aaarrrgh.

Nothing to do but keep going and give it enough coverage to be at least a somewhat even, horrible dark stained colour.

Now it was perfectly stiff, and thus completely inflexible and too small. Real tears.

I set it aside for a few weeks and wallowed in my self pity. 

Eventually I decided to try washing it. Theoretically the hat stiffener shouldn't wash out with water, but it kind of did. At least all the stiffness part of it did. The uneven staining remained.

It's never quite gone back to the sizing it was pre-ruining and washing and so it needs a hefty bit of steam ironing to achieve the shape in these photos.

The tendency is for it to be a bit small and so it looks rounded where it sits around my head and then the top part appears like a shrunken souffle hovering above the crown.

Can you tell I'm still a bit sad? I mean I'm laughing at myself as well, and I'll definitely have another go at it one day.

But meanwhile, this one is still perfectly wearable and at least I won't be too precious about it getting dirty or stained.

And it can be scrunched up and shoved into a bag and then it (sort of) pops back into shape. At least the shape that it now chooses to be.

It's all about knowing when to stop.

Secret Valentine Exchange Part X - Cycling Cap

This was the November instalment in my year of making a gift for a (semi)stranger (Secret Valentine Exchange in hiatus). I misjudged just how long it takes to get something from one side of our country to the other, foolishly thinking it would be less time than it took to send something to Canada. Wrong.

Anyway, I've heard it arrived yesterday so I can share here...
Let's start with the first prototype - the one my gift recipient didn't receive.
I'm working on the blog-proven premise that everything looks better on my son, hence the cool model.

Back in my original callout for suggestions Tracey asked for a cycling cap. Something to wear under her helmet to keep the harsh W.A sun out of her eyes and off her head.

I have no experience with wearing or sewing cycling caps. They've never been part of the cycling tenue at our house. But it seemed like a fun and worthy project, and one day, when the older bloke decides he is thinning on top sufficiently to need a cycling cap, I'll be ready!

I started with a search for an online pattern. I found this one via Flickr but there's no way those dimensions were correct. I couldn't print it such that the written measurements would match the actual pattern pieces. But in the comments was a link to a printable PDF version that was slightly modified, so that became my launching point.

The pattern has four panels, each with a dart, then the brim attached.
I knew it was going to be a summer time hat, not a warm winter thing with ear covers, so I thought why not use some pretty Liberty of London fabrics.

I meticulously french seamed both my darts and my 1/4" panel seams so it would be gorgeously neat on the inside.

I added a KATM label with Bespoke on it, but forget to heat seal the cut ends of the label, so after stitching it into my tiny french seam it did pull out a bit and look like it might come out. I simply stitched around the other three edges to secure it and it was good.

The brim on this one is just a single layer of the plastic from a 2L milk carton.

You can wear it turned up for full visibility...

Or flipped down to keep the sun out of your eyes...

I didn't follow any instructions to construct the cap as it all seemed pretty self-explanatory. After basting the brim to the cap I then made a strip of pink cotton/lycra knit binding to finish the inside of the cap all around. I made the binding smaller than the cap so it would be stretched a bit to fit, but also added a short section of elastic at the back inside the binding for further gathering.

Here's where I made a Secret Valentine Exchange rookie error - I'd failed to do my research on my giftee. The hat was OK, it was perhaps a little bigger than I'd wanted it to be. The plastic of the brim threatened to be a little sharp at the edges. But it was beautifully made and looked super cool with six different Liberty fabrics.

In looking up Tracey again on Instagram to ask for her address I found an old conversation we had through direct messaging about women's cycling clothes. It ended with the line "... and I hate pink"

Time to make another hat and fix the little niggly bits and ditch the pink!

This one is also a Liberty of London fabric and one of the only Liberty fabrics that I'd ever get excited about myself (not a fan of pink or florals either!)

I took about 3/4" off the bottom of each panel so that the crown was less deep. I added about that much to each side of the brim to give it a more gentle and wider attachment and I covered the milk bottle plastic in a layer each side of that interfacing that looks like paper felt. It softens the plastic a little and protects the fine fabric from the sharp, plastic edges.

I still French seamed all the darts and seams, and this time I reached beyond what was immediately next to me and sought out some black knit for the binding.

I didn't have another Bespoke label, but a One of a Kind label seemed equally appropriate.

I'm pretty happy with this one and I hope it suits Tracey's bike style and keeps the sun and magpies off her face for many rides to come.

Girl's Sassy Clothes - Hat "q"

What are kids like, hey? No sooner has my daughter outgrown something that she had previously refused to wear, and suddenly she loves it?! I'd made Hat "q" twice before (here and here in Flickr) and she was all over the brown wool version recently but it was too small.

I quickly got approval to make another, and yep, it could match her recent coat. When you get that kind of affirmation, you don't hang around, you get sewing!

Yes - that is lipstick. A recent gift that she loves from my MIL and I'm only allowed to remove that which is all over her face, not ANY from her lips. Sigh.

The hat comes from Girl's Sassy Clothes by Yuki Araki which is one of my very well used Japanese pattern books. This is one that I could happily make everything in the book. The hat comes in 3 sizes, 50cm, 52cm and 54cm. The first two I made were size 50cm. I measured her head at 52cm exactly but decided to go up to the 54cm size to avoid it being too small.

Looking back it was two years ago yesterday that I tried to photograph her wearing the first hat. Note the small food bribe and the hand poised ready to rip the hat off any second:

That picture reminds me that I have two cuts of flannelette fabric set aside for more winter versions of the Oliver + S Music Class Blouse. Mentally added to the very long list of things I want to make.

The brim is a really sweet shape with this narrow brim at the back and a lovely face shading width at the front. The brim pieces are cut on the bias and somehow this hat comes together so much more easily than others I've sewn.

The lining is an identical, non interfaced version of the main hat. Both are constructed and then sewn together at the brim leaving a 2 inch gap to turn it all right side out before edgestitching the brim. This is a nice way to sew a lined hat without having to do any handstitching.

I kept it simple on the side this time and just used a little bias tube of the same fabric to cover the join in the band.

Take note: the band pieces are too short to overlap properly. I added the correct seam allowance, but the pattern shows you turning the ends of one piece in, then tucking the other inside the tube of the first. Simply not possible. These only just meet and overlap enough to be stitched. Need to add at least another 1cm to each side in order for a prettier finish.

I should get around to hand stitching the band to the crown to prevent it sliding up like it has above, but also to thwart my daughter in her attempts to remove and lose the band.

So there's my happy hat model and happy hat news.

The sad hat news is that P's Straw Boater, which I had just entered in the Royal Show (for fun!) has had a hole chewed in it by the small furry monster (aka kitten) that is living with us temporarily. I had some leftover straw braid and thought for a moment I could redo the crown and save it, but on closer inspection he has chewed where the crown meets the lid and damaged both parts. It can be patched for wearing but it's not show worthy.

I shall have my revenge as I'm taking him in to work with me next week and will extract my pound of flesh! (so to speak, I imagine they'll only be about 2grams each, not nearly a pound!) :)

Straw Boater Project: Cruising at a very ambitious altitude.

Tuesday of this week was Italian Day at P's school. We were told there would be Mt Vesuvius volcano experiments, drawing Michelangelo style while lying on your back under the classroom table, playing calcio, and eating; bruschetta, pasta, tiramisu and gelati....

And, of course, there was a need to dress up. I was really mindful (for about 5 minutes) of not taking over and getting over excited about my his first school costume. We talked about what P wanted to wear and searched for some images. Turned out we had almost everything we needed for a gondolier...

Everything that is except the hat. You already know what I did about that, right?!

I'd never made a straw hat before, but I figured a boater would have to be the easiest to start with. It's all right angles and I imagined I would make the three sections and then join them together. Sounded simple in my head.

I discovered Torb and Reiner and gave them a call. No, I've never done this before. No, I don't have time to drive across town for a lesson or to buy a hat block. No, I have no idea what I need or how much of it...

To her credit, Nina, who took my call, was probably not used to this kind of brazen ambition from a complete novice. But I was coming off the back of my first-ever-beading-project-blue-ribbon and in my head I could imagine what I was going to do. She packaged up 10metres of 10mm wide wheat braid and some red grosgrain ribbon and sent it to me express post for next day delivery.

Of course, I foolishly sat on it for 48 hours while finishing my Kid's Clothes Week sewing, and then began the weekend of the Straw Boater Project.

I made a cardboard "hat" for P so that I would have the correct size and the approximate depth of the crown then started stitching....

The advice that I had from Nina was that the straw braid could be brittle and I needed to wet it to shape it. The bit that I figured out for myself was that the best way to prevent those F^*%ng twisty knots in the thread was to run the lengths along a tealight candle in order to wax them. It didn't entirely prevent the knots and there was a fair bit of tugging knots through, some occasionally successful unpicking of knots, and plenty of language of which a genteel boater wearer would not approve.

I realised, perhaps a bit too late, that the lid should not be perfectly round, so started overlapping the braid at the sides more to give it an oval shape. I kept going round and round until the lid was the same size as my green cardboard hat.

The crown was probably the easiest part. Using the green hat as a size guide I pegged out the first round and then stitched until it was deep enough. While the kids rode their bikes at the skate park on Sunday, I sewed. The lid went on top and was stitched in place, at which point it looked a lot like I should be steaming dumplings in it. As an aside, this project was probably the most pleasant smelling thing I've ever sewn. I must have been a horse or a goat in another life!

By the time I was ready to start the brim it was Monday afternoon and the kids were going to swimming. In order to sew the brim without having to hold the crown, I marked the outline of the crown on paper and then pinned the braid to the markings to begin my brim. Once I had the first stitches in place it became fixed in diameter and portable. I sewed furiously while they swam. It was the best location of the weekend as a quick dunk in the pool was all the wheat braid needed to stay supple.

Finally, a very late night stint lasting well into Tuesday morning had the brim attached, the Petersham ribbon sewn in (that's the bit where I wished I owned a thimble) and the ribbon on the outside.

In what must be a glorious hatters version of a hole in one, Nina's estimate of 10m of braid was EXACTLY what was required. There was not even a centimetre to trim off and nothing was missing for lack of more straw. She obviously really knows her stuff! As she had every reason to doubt that I did, she had sent about 3m extra for free just in case. There might come a time when I've forgotten just how much work this was and end up making a miniature one for P's teddy.

Thank you so much to everyone who followed my progress on Flickr or Facebook. Your encouragement was everything to me. It was a long, long weekend and I honestly may have lost the plot if not for the "ping" of my phone telling me that someone else "got" what I was doing.

You'd be horrified if you knew this kid's history with losing school hats. His track record is appalling. I'm delighted to say, that after seeing his mum toil all weekend, he was very mindful that if the hat didn't come home, neither should he. It did. He had a great day.

Ciao!

KCW: Once Upon A Time...

Once upon a time, there was a little girl....

whose mother sewed her a dress using Liberty of London Carnaby jersey knit,

and she lived happily ever after.

The End.

Pattern: Make It Perfect Little Joey
Size 4 - no modifications
Fabric: Liberty Of London Carnaby jersey and navy ribbing

The other KCW news is a secret polo shirt for P that I can't share fully yet...

and a completely insane work in progress.....

Does anyone else do this kind of thing? Tuesday is Italian day at P's school. We have everything we need for a great Venetian gondolier costume, except the straw boater hat.

I'm here to tell you that you can buy a fedora, a trilby, a cowboy hat, all sorts of hats for kids. But not straw boaters. So I'm making one. Never done it before, but that kind of thing doesn't stop me! Follow my progress on Facebook or Flickr. It's one enormous task!

here's to turning three!

 

There aren't many birthday's in your life when your mum can convince you to wear a fabric party hat made of leftover scraps! Here's to 3 year olds! hip hip hooray!

 



Two 3 year old thumbs up for the twirl factor, but two 3 year old thumbs down on the colour. I've never seen any ambivalence of attitude in a 3 year old. So on this dress, we'll swing from love to hate depending on the mood. That's the roller coaster we ride at our house. Here's to 3 year olds! sigh, sigh, hooray!

But in typical 3 year old just-starting-to -work-out-empathy style I am reassured that "Tinkerbell really likes her new dress, mum. She's delighted with it" Thanks darling. Happy birthday.

Hip hip hooray details:
A wears: Oliver + S Pinwheel Dress and Tunic, size 3 and fabric party hat from a Japanese magazine. (nightmare to turn inside out. Assuming that's what I was meant to do....)
Tinkerbell wears: Little Things To Sew tea Party Doll Dress
Fabric requirement for all: 1.5m

Hats Galore: and a no hand sewing tip

For those of us in the southern hemisphere, Kid's Clothes Week in "fall" aligns well with the start of the summer hat wearing season. This time last year I cut out seven hats in advance and sewed one each night for a week. The kids have outgrown those hats so it was time for some more.

First up for A, the Bucket Hat from Little Things To Sew. Last summer's version was a size small with some shoestring straps. This year, a size medium for a big girl who's learned to leave her hat on!

The pattern is truly reversible, and if you're neat enough (tip coming...) then it's hard to tell which is the side that's meant to be the outside!

P had just slightly outgrown the Large size. I thought about upscaling the pattern but just went with sewing a 3/8th inch seam instead of 4/8th inch and that gave enough extra room for this year at least.

I don't think my kids have bigger than average heads, but the measurement put him at the upper end of the size range for the Large size. He's five and a half years old, and the pattern suggests the large size is for 6 to 8 year olds. Maybe he does have a big head after all. Most importantly, be sure to measure your kid rather than go by age alone.

I've made the Bucket Hat many times now and the instructions are great. I especially love the oval shape and the generous brim.

Next up, I went back to the Nicole Mallalieu Kid's Hat pattern. A size medium for A first:

This pattern has a round crown and quite a different shape. It comes with four different brim widths for each size (this is the second widest) and lots of suggestions for finishing the brim. Here I used binding cut on the grain which the pattern says will pull the brim up into a sharp bend. It doesn't really. this brim will happily be down, although I guess it curves a bit. if you wanted it to be completely straight out then you'd use bias cut binding. These tips are in the pattern instructions.

The pattern has the side piece and the brim piece cut as single pieces, whereas the Oliver + S hat has two symmetrical pieces with seams at the side. The brim is a bit narrower at the back than the front. Because of the single piece patterns and some very strict rules about cutting on the bias it uses more fabric than the LTTS hat. But because of the bias cutting it comes together a lot more easily and it's not necessary to clip into the seam allowances. The instructions show the crown being "eased" into the side section without any pins apparent in the photo. I've made it four times but I'm not that good. I use a lot of pins!

The size range is a bit bigger than the Oliver + S hat and the straight size Large fit P perfectly. With these two hats I hand stitched the lining fabric at the brim as there's no topstitching required, but read on for some tips on avoiding hand sewing for the Oliver + S Bucket Hat.....

The first method is described beautifully by A Little Gray on her look no hand sewing tutorial
Essentially you make the outer hat, then the lining hat. Put them right sides together, sew most of the way around the brim before turning them right side out and finishing by edgestitching the brim closed.

If you wanted to add some bias binding (or straight grain binding) then you could make it even easier by putting the hats wrong sides together (as if finished) and use the binding to finish the brim edge.

My way is to use iron on adhesive and effectively stick the hats together before edgestitching through both layers. You'll need some Heat'n'Bond (or similar) and an ironing sleeve board

 

Construct the hat as per the instructions up to the point where you would handstitch the lining in.

 

Press the side seam well to press the seam allowances and side wall away from the brim

 

 

Then press the edge of the lining hat 1/2" to the wrong side as per the pattern instructions

 

 

Now turn the lining hat right side out and try it on the hat and see how the folded edge lines up with the sewn seam.

 

 

You may need to adjust the depth of your folded seam allowance of the lining piece is too small or too big. If you've been fairly accurate with your other seams it should be just right.

 

Take it off, turn it inside out again and iron the fusible web along the folded edge the whole way around the side wall of the hat lining.

 

 

Then peel off the paper backing

 

 

Put the hat lining back onto the hat with wrong sides facing and iron it together

 

 

Make sure the folded edge is exactly on top of the stitched line where the outer side wall is sewn to the brim. Here's where you really need a sleeve board as the hat needs to retain it's "openness" while you press. If you don't have a sleeve board then a rolled up towel shoved inside the hat can work.

 

Now edgestitch around the hat. You'll be edgestitching both sides of the hat really nicely and it will be hard to tell which was the outside and which the inside when you're done!

 

 

Then, make sure you put your Bucket Hat in the Little Things To Sew Cover to Cover Challenge Flickr group here

 

I love iron on adhesive and use it for small bound cuffs on sleeves, to avoid hand sewing collars before edgestitching them and especially for positioning bias binding so it looks great when viewed from either side.

 

And ever since I made these hats we've been plunged back into some very cold weather. Here's wishing for sunny, hat days soon!