Fiona - Part 2 - The Hat

As you may recall, I am working on a Fiona costume for my daughter for Halloween. You can see the first post here. Today I am putting together the hat.

When my daughter first decided she wanted to dress up like Fiona, I started thinking about how I would make the hat and the shape to use. I came up with something in my mind that looked a lot like a modified ski mask. Then it struck me, why not look up online to see if anyone else had come up with a pattern already? Duh. So I searched and found a few decent tutorials. The best one is here. And I have to say if you are going to make one of these hats I recommend you use this tutorial as it is the best I have seen and what I based my hat off of. The only thing I don't like about it is there isn't enough pictures. So I am going to show you how I made my hat.

The tutorial I linked above from Instructables has an awesome pattern already attached. I being the patience person I am could not wait to get access to a printer so I decided to make my own pattern (based solely on the photos not actually looking at the pattern posted there). It took about 2-3 hours to get the pattern just right and fit my daughter's head. You may be able to see in the photos where I had to cut pieces of the pattern off, move them over and tape them in place  (the shiny spots are tape - I first had the chin straps set way to far in, ie they weren't covering my daughter's ears, just her cheeks). I even made the piece too short to begin with. I probably should have waited to print the pattern from Instructables but I wanted to design my own.

Once I was done I ended up with a pattern very similar to the one from Instructables. However, mine was quite a bit smaller since I was making one for a head that is about 21 inches in diameter.

To make the hat, I gather my materials:

• 1 yard of white felt (piece I bought was 36 in by 36 in)
• 1 piece of velcro (forgot to buy some so I had some black pieces on hand)
• Sewing Machine
• White thread
• Lots of pins
• floral wire
• stuffing

First, I folded the felt in half. Then I pinned my pattern pieces in place. I cut two of each piece except the ears which I cut 4 of those.

Next I turned the pieces inside out and pinned them together. I pinned the short end of the Body of the Hat together for each piece, I pinned the ears together too. I did not pin the Top of Hat yet.

Next I stitched the short end of the Body of Hat. I stitched each piece separately (not together, I put those together at the end). In order to make sure the Body of the Hat was nice and secure, I added two straight stitches close to the edge. These stitches were about 1/4 inch from the edge.

Next I stitched the both sets of ears together making sure not to stitch the bottom (straight) edge.

Next, I pinned the Top of the Hat (circle piece) to the Body of the Hat for each set. You really need to take your time pinning these together to make sure that the circle is pinned just right so you don't get any weird bunching. I must say that half way through pinnning the top in place I started to wonder if I had cut the circle large enough (fortunaetly I had).

Notice I used a LOT of pins here. I was super worried it would come undone will sewing or I would get a weird wrinkle. I got neither of those things.

One thing I did note was you have the keep the fabirc very flat near the machine (see the wrinkling in the front). I sewed this seam pretty slowly in order to make sure I was keeping the material flat going into the machine plus I had to remove all those pins. -MAKE SURE NOT TO SEW OVER YOUR PINS!

Here's what mine looked like once the top was sewn in place. When you are done you'll have two of these pieces.

The next part had to be handled delicately. First, decide which of the hats will be the outside and which will be the inside. With the Outside hat inside out (seams facing out), mark the top (circle) to show where you want the ears to go. The ears will have to be inserted and stitched in place. I cut to slits about 2 inches wide (based on my ear sizing) about mid way across the hat and about 2 inches from each edge.


Turn the ears inside out (seams on the inside). To make the ears stand up, I used some coated floral wire I had laying around. I bent a piece in a bunny ear shape and placed that into one of the ears and cut off the excess floral wire. Then repeated for the other ear and then stuffed the ears.



I'm going to tell you how I secured the ears in place, but if I was doing this again I'd do it differently because my ears are floppy. WHAT I DID: Stitched the ears in place with the machine. Straight across closing the ears up. WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: Hand stitched the ears such that the bottom was still open to the inside of the hat, this way I could have ran the floral wire down into the hat (giving more stability). I also think I should have used more floral wire.

Anyway, at this point I remembered that I needed to add my Velcro. The instructables tutorial ties the ends (chin straps) of his hat together. I decided when I started my project that I was not spending all night on Halloween tying and re-tying the hat for my daughter, so Velcro was my solution. The first thing I did was turn the Outside hat (one with ears attached) right side out. The other hat (inside one, one without ears) was still wrong side out. I stuffed the one with out ears into the hat with the ears. One piece of velcro was pinned in place on the inside (right side) of the inner hat about 1/2 inch from the bottom of the chin strap. The other piece of velcro was pinned in place on the opposite side of the hat on the outside chin strap of the outside hat (one with ears) about 1/2 inch from the bottom.

You could also wait until the very end to add the Velcro if this makes no sense. Then I stitched both pieces in place.

Last thing I did was put it all together. I turned the outside hat inside out (ears in) and the other hat right side out (seam side in). I pinned both hats together taking special care not to pin the ears (I stuffed them in the side wear the chin strap was). Next I sewed both pieces together around the entire perimeter except for about a 2 inch long opening near the bottom back. I left this to turn the hat right side out through. Once everything was turned the way it should be, I top stitched the opening closed.

The hat was a perfect fit on the Little Sewing Ninja. But like I said above, my ears flopped. So I have added a few hand stitches on the outside to help them stand up. My husband has suggest some cardboard, so I may add that to the rear to give them more support.