Hat party results!

Yay another successful hat party!

Due to the holidays and all, not as many people showed up as last time but! 22 hats were made!

Also Doris added to my hat tutorial and wrote a fun tutorial on how to insert cat ears, check it out!

(Also I just realized I blurred your face only to link to a post where it's quite prominent...)

Fleece hat tutorial

The promised tutorial!

So!
This is for the absolute basic hat. In size medium, which is most people. I'll grab the other sizes in the future.
Please bear with me! I've never done a really detailed tutorial before, so this may be way too much information, sorry.

Before I start anything I make sure I have all this stuff handy:

And a sewing machine/thread/fabric obviously. You probably won't need anything in my pencil case there, but it's like my sewing safety net, I just always like it handy just in case (so basically it sucks when I lose it, which I do).

This is the pattern!
The hat band is 24" x 6"
The triangle bit is 6" across the slightly curved bottom, and 5.5" from the tip to the base. Note the rounded sides! 'Cause heads are.. you know... round....
My triangle pattern is pretty beat up from how many times it was used at my last hat shindig (whereas my hat band pattern is brand spanking new since I couldn't find my old one), I just even out the imperfections when I cut it out.

You'll need to cut 4 triangles and one hat band, being really mindful of the stretch.
Some fleeces stretches 4 ways, but the generic stuff, and the stuff I'm using for demo is only 2-way stretch.

It's really easy to tell which way, just stretch!

I'm cutting two triangles at a time here, but you can cut all four at once if your scissors are sharp enough.

All your pieces!

 Pin along one side of each pair of triangles. You don't really need to do this if you don't want to, fleece sticks to itself, so it's whatever you're most comfortable with.

Sew the seam at 1/4"

Or just match the edge of the fabric up with the edge of your pressure foot. Not all pressure feet are 1/4", but I've found fleece is so forgiving it really really doesn't matter. 

 

Easy peasy

 So now you have your two sides.

Slap 'em together, matching the two tops in the center.

Sew, again at 1/4" and tada!

This is the crown of your hat, yay!

Now to the hat band!

Just fold it in half, matching the two short sides.

I sew this at 1/2"(Edit! Reading this after making many more hats, I totally forgot I patterned for a 1/2" seam allowance here and have consistently used the edge of my foot, and it hasn't made any difference. So whatever you're most comfortable with).

Hat band yay!
The following is the simplest way to do it and be done, but I'll be following up with some alternative methods as well.
Fold it in half length wise, matching the seam up with itself.

Plop the crown in

Well. Pin it in would be better.

Pin all the seams open, to reduce bulk. I usually center the seam of the hat band in the center of a triangle, so I don't have that bulk to deal with.

Sew!
I sew at 1/4-1/2"(depending on if I'm going to top stitch the seam allowance down).

Aaaand
Done!
Really!

Embellishing and other options to come~

Edit! AJ suggested I scan the pattern with inch markings:

Literal Geek Hat Party

`I am, basically, terrible at blogging.

Next Saturday, the 17th, I'm hosting another hat party in preparation for the cold~

Being that my friends are.. my friends, at the last hat party there was a very strong geek bend, that combined with my sister wanting to make a Captain America cake and I thought hey, why not make it the theme this time?

Hat Part evite

I used evite for my invitation, and it's not really suited for linking to on a blog, so if that link didn't work do please feel free to contact me for details.

While I prep for this party I plan on taking step by step photos so I can write up that tutorial I promised, also feel free to bother me about that!

March Hat Party

I’m behind, I know, sorry~!

In March I had the biggest hat party yet! To celebrate my not-deadness 8D

We ended up with 10-15 people and 6 hours later, 65 hats!

These all look a bit funny on my because I have a small head, and these are the size Larges we made. 

We make three sizes, small, medium, and large. Small is generally for little kids, medium is well, average. Everyone who attended the party was probably a medium. Large is for them people who just... have big heads 8D We don't make as many of those. 

Actually I'm not sure if we should just make medium for everyone? They do stretch. 

Thoughts?

 

So. Sadly these hats are not turned in yet. After the party, the hats get washed as most if not all the fleece came from houses with cats, and the hats are going to imuno-compromised people. Not a necessarily good combination.

 

It took me a few weekends to get to it. Then I snapped all of these pics and washed everything and had them bagged and ready to go by the end of the weekend.

I felt so accomplished.

Well.

My mum's friend's niece has just started chemo, and the hair loss will start in a few weeks. So she asked to nab one. Great, that's what they're for!

She opens the tote...

Condensation D:

All of the bags.

They felt dry when I'd bagged them but I guess fleece retains moisture aaand... they weren't.

So drying each batch thoroughly now.

Some of the labels also got mildewy or the fleece bled so they got spotty :/ So currently designing some new labels anyway. Which I may post for feedback.

Everything should be turned in by Wed!

Pics of the other sizes, patterns, and tutorials coming soon~!

Project introduction!

A long time ago I made some matching fleece Batman hats for my little group going to Japan in the winter together. 

Fast forward several years, lemme tell you losing your hair is cold and uncomfortable. Return of the fleece hat! 

In all the infusion clinics I went to, my hat was commented on by nurses and fellow patients.
So here’s the thing, most hats you can get for free in the infusion clinics are donated by nice people learning how to knit with their great-aunt’s left over yarn. They. Are. Ugly. (But keep doing it! After you’ve become proficient there’s plenty of people who’d love a cute knit hat).

Other options are to buy cloches which is a look I think only extremely cute girls with petite features can pull off, but they don’t cover completely the lack-of-hair. And most people going through chemo want to completely cover up the lack-of-hair (okay, I’m a terrible example, as I took advantage of my lack-of-hair to costume Voldemort).
So wearing a wig under a hat? Uncomfortable, unless you wear a wig liner. Wearing a wig liner plus a wig plus a hat? Your head starts to over heat and still not so comfortable. So then you’ve got beanies, which... are often kind of thuggy...

Bottom line! There aren’t many cute (and comfortable!) easy options.
So my mum and I began picking up fleece remnants (you don’t need much to make a hat, plus remnants are often 50% off) at the fabric store, I got a bunch of my friends together, gave them a pattern and directions, fed them, had a good time, and made hats!

The start of a beautiful project :D