Tuesday, November 30, 2010

DIY Hat from an old sweater

Karl had a FANTASTIC sweater that he put in the Goodwill pile this summer.  It is a wool/cotton blend and was just too warm for him.  Here he is wearing it a few years ago with Phae (chubby, cute baby Phae).



Luckily it takes us a good year to get things to goodwill!  I recently decided I couldn't waste this sweater and decided it would make the perfect hat.  I figured I could make them for the whole family... turns out Karl and I both have big heads, so I could only make 1 adult hat from the part of the sweater with the colors Karl liked.  Had this been an all over pattern, I could easily have gotten 2 hats out of it.  Anyway, after making Karl's I realized the sleeve fit Kasen perfectly.  Here they are in their new hats:



Cute huh?  Don't let that girl fool you - she is THRILLED momma makes her wear re-purposed sweaters as hats.  Wait... this is her normal face.  She did nicely turn her head so you could see the back.  She is actually a better model looking away from the camera.



The baby hat was definitely the easiest one and honestly pretty darn cute.  How did I do it?  Basically, once the sleeve was cut in half (where it would fit over her head with the shoulder part flopping to the back), I just sewed the top of the sleeve hole to the bottom of the sleeve hole.  You can see it better here:



This shape naturally gave these cute "ears".  I used a needle to weave some floss through the bottom of the ears and cinched them (for a boy I probably would have tied on the inside and cut off the extra).  A little fabric glue on each knot finished it off. 



I added some trim from the bottom of the sweater, but only to match Karl's.  Honestly it would easier and just as cute simply hemmed.  So fast.  Literally the baby hat took 10 minutes.  This one was made from a men's medium sweater (will probably fit 9 months maybe up to 18 months - depends on stretchiness of sweater).  I will probably zigzag stitch the seams if I decide to wash it - a serger would have been AWESOME for this. 

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