Our Accessories Category

AKA How to make a hat with a bill

For a long time now people have been asking me to do a tutorial on how to do a hat with a bill (because of this post). So finally I got around to it. Sorry it took almost a year. This tutorial is basically the 45 minute hat, plus bill

So I’ve already cut the elbow patches and leg warmers out of my sweater (shown in white). So I had to cut around the missing sections.

1. Take a ball cap and trace the bill. This is your insert pattern.

2. Now add 0.5″ all the way around your insert pattern. You’ve now made yourself  a bill pattern.

3. Here’s my big secret. Transparency paper. You know, like you used in school for the over head projector? It makes a great bil insert. I don’t like using cardboard like some people do because it gets gross when wet. This stuff is fine. I haven’t tried to wash/dry it. But otherwise it works great. So take a sheet of transparency paper and cut a bill insert out

4. Using your bill pattern, cut 2 out of your sweater

5. Sew bill pieces together with 0.5″ seam

6. Snip around curved sections

7. Turn right side out, press

8. Insert the bill insert. pin. Top stitch 3 lines equal distance apart. I used 1/2 a presser foot width as my measurement

9. Measure around your head. This is your headband length

10. For the headband portion, I did not have enough of my sweater left to do both the inside and outside. Also, it was too short to do 1 piece, so I had to pieces together the band. To do this, I cut 2″ strips out of my sweater down the side. I sewed these together. Then cut to the length from step 9. Cut an equal strip out of scrap fabric. It’s going to be on the inside so it doesn’t matter that much

11. Sew your headband strips, both inside and out, together to make 2 loops.

12. Find the center of your outer headband. Pin to the center of you bill. Working out from this point, pin your bill to the outer headband. Repeat with inner.

13. Now sew together inner and outer headband all the way around, including bill section.

14. Cut out circle from back side of sweater. I cut mine at 8.5″ to get a good amount of fullness.

15. Pin edge of circle to raw edge of outer headband, pleating as you go. Sew

16. Finish raw edge of inner headband as you like, I surged it.

17. Turn inner headband up so it covers seam from 15.

18. On outside of hat, on the upper hat portion, stitch as close to the seam from step 15 as you can. This will hid all the unfinished edges on the inside of your hat.

Then you’re done. You have an adorable hat will a bill!

Last week we did elbow patches, this week is leg warmers!

I opted for a multifunctional leg warmer. I know it sounds tricky, but it’s not. I used some scrap fabric so one side of the leg warmer has three tiers while the other only has one. This gives me plenty of options.

1. Cut the sleeves off your sweater. Cut the bottom ribbed part off, about 3″ total

2. Cut the raw edge (near shoulder) off so it’s straight across. Measure the circumference of the opening. This is your width.

3. With your second and third fabric (must be stretch of some sort) cut rectangles 8″ and 14″ tall and match the width measured in step 2 plus 1 ” (seam allowance).

4. Finish the upper edge of the 2 spare fabrics (roll or surge). Sew your waist band strip and two extra fabrics into tubes, like above

5. This next step was tricky to diagram, so bare with me. Now you are going to place your tubes inside each other from tallest to shortest. So it’ll go gray, dotted then green. Line up the bottom edge. Pin together

6. Now place the sleeve section from step 2 inside all of those. Pin

7. Using elastic thread in your bobbin, stitch along the bottom edge.

And that’s it! So now you can wear these bad boys multiple ways. You can tuck the upper black portion in so you only see the patterned fabric and the green. Or flip the whole thing over so you only see the green!

Here it is with all three showing. Sorry the picture is fuzzy and has a brown hue. My camera has been acting up

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I absolutely love painted shoes. You can find them all over the internet and they are just amazing. So on a recent business trip, I decided to fill some of my boring hotel time with a craft project. I went to Walmart and bought a pair of $10 heels on clearance, some sand paper, paint, and a $2 set of paint brushes. I spent a grand total of $20 on this project (minus the clear spray I used to seal it).

The $10 Shoes

Everything I used, except the gloss spray

So here’s what I did:

1. Sand the shoe down. The paint won’t adhere to the shinny surface, so you need to get all that off. I also hear using acetone helps, but I didn’t have any.

2. Tape off the bottom of the shoe

3. Paint your base coat, I used solid white and needed 2 coats.

4. Once your base coat is dry, draw on your design lightly with pencil.

5. Finish painting

6. Seal with 3 coats of shinny clear gloss spray paint.

Gorgeous!

So after Thanksgiving my middle sister (Angela) and I decided to have craft day. I taught her how to make the 45-minute hat while I made hats for my three beautiful nieces. Unfortunately, the measurements I got offline for head sizes were way off, and none of the hats fit. Not to leave my nieces’ heads cold, I made up a new hat pattern using a hooded sweatshirt. This hat is just as easy as the 45-minute hat, and maybe even faster.

As a side note, do you know how much fabric is in hooded sweatshirts??!! It’s incredible! I made six hats out of 1 hoodie. How awesome is that?

For this tutorial, I made 4 of the same hat in 3 sizes:

-Adult

-2 year old

-9 month old

This is a gender neutral hat (with out the flower of course). You can make it plain, add flowers or skulls or whatever. Make it your own.

I’ll go through using the adult sizes. The adjustments for different sizes will be at the end.

1. Disassemble your hoodie. To get the most use out of it, cut all the seams off including the waist band. Use a seam ripper to get the front pocket off. This gives you a lot more fabric to work with.
2. Cut 2 rectangles 10” x 12”. The short axis should be up-and-down with the grain of the sweatshirt. So basically the long end is at the top of the hoodie
3. Leaving a 3” straight segment on either side, cut the rectangle into an arched shape
   
   1. Here is where you can add embellishments. I added a hot pink flower using some jersey fabric from a T-Shirt.
   2. Cut Circles (I used the bottom of a votive candle holder to measure)

   

   3. Starting with the outer ring, sew in place. For adult hats, 3 rings of petals look best. The smaller the hat: the fewer rings you need.

   
   
   

   4. You might want to had sew one or to stitches in the upper petals so they don’t flop down.
4. With right-sides together sew along the arch, but not the straight segments
5. Turn right-side out, pull the seam through and sew the straight segment (wrong sides together)



6. Top stitch seam, the whole length
7. Roll bottom edge, sew



8. Flip up 2.5”, sew the side seams in place. Do not sew all the way around, it makes the hat less stretchy



9. Turn hat inside out, flatten along the front to back axis
10. Sew small arch across top of hat

DONE!

I love this hat, I really do. It was so incredibly simple, there are endless possibilities.

Adult: 10″x12″

2 year old:9″x11″

9 Month old: 8″x10″