making a santa hat

This was one of those quick-and-easy projects that somehow gets out of hand, like when you think you might quickly scoot the bookcase to the other side of the room but first have to remove the books, of course, and 4 hours later find yourself reorganizing your entire library, making 8 separate bags for all the places and people you plant to pass some of the extras to. And then, since the bookcase is now empty, you realize you may as well sand it down and paint it the color you'd always planned…but um, now the curtains clash with the new color and must be replaced.

Does this ever happen to you? Please tell me it does.

*****

C has a large head which can't fit into any of our Santa hats. He asked me to make him one, and I agreed. An hourlong project, I figured.

The fabric store didn't have the red fur he requested, but it did have all its "soft and fluffy fabrics" (yes, I believe that is the tailor's term) discounted 50%. So I brought some home and started cutting.

Then I noticed that the red fabric was kind of floppy. I thought I might add a little something to give it heft and spied some leftover cotton batting on the sewing shelf. And then I realized that C, once one of those children who was seriously disturbed by seams, was even at 18 not going to like having a bulky one touching his head. I decided to make the batting into a lining. (Why at this point I didn't switch to a more suitable fabric is beyond me. I blame my fuzzy, congested head.)

I had also neglected to get a pom-pom and realized that none of the white yarn I had was going to work with the creamy, textured fur of the brim. Thank goodness for the internet.

The entire project ended up being only mildly more involved than sewing the fur-trimmed cone I'd originally envisioned; but you know how it is when you're revising the project along the way instead of planning it well in the first place. Maybe you run into the dinner hour, have to clear everything from the kitchen table and set it up again after the dishes are done…and perhaps the son who wanted the hat also decides he needs his long hair shaved down to stubs that very night—10 pm!—and since the last time you shaved his head was 9 years ago, the clippers are rusty and an impromptu trip to town must be made for a new pair. And it turns out you've forgotten how to use clippers, anyway, so must make several ungainly passes before you get the hang of it.

This is how a one-hour project ends up lasting till midnight. 

But maybe you can learn from my ineptitude and make your Santa hat in 30 minutes—it really shouldn't take much longer than that. Below is exactly how I made it, with notes of what I'd do differently next time in italics:

materials and tools

Red cap fabric 2/3 yard

White trim fabric 1/4 yard

lining fabric, same as red cap fabric

(note: in retrospect, I think 1/2 yd of red is plenty for most hats. C has that large diameter head and I was going for proportion. And 1/4 yd of trim fabric felt a little tight—I might get 3/8 yd of that. It depends on your preference, of course. Also, while scrap batting worked fine for the lining, I regret that I didn't think to use a real fabric rather than what is essentially needle-punched cotton fluff.)

scissors

thread

stuffing for the pom-pom

(I used scrap fabric but would have preferred a lighter-weight polyester stuffing if I'd had it)

hot glue/glue gun

I used a machine, but this could easily be handsewn. Seams are arbitrarily 1/2" wide. Also, I apologize for my photos, which were taken in the poor artificial light of our house. As it got darker, the photo color became harsher and more contrasty, but I hope you can at least see the steps.

steps

1. Measure your head. Remember to measure it both around the crown and as the hat will be worn (from the nape of the neck to the forehead) and choose the larger measurement. You can either use a measuring tape or the trim fabric itself. C's head measures 24" but when we wrapped the fur around to see what felt comfortable, he found he actually liked it being 26" around.

2. Cut trim fabric to to width, adding 1/2" seam allowance to each end. The height will be determined by the yardage you have, although you may certainly want to square it up. In this photo, my trim fabric is the 9" (1/4 yd) folded in half to 4-1/2" high. It is then folded in half across, with a 13-1/2" width cut. With 1/2" wide seam, that will make 26" diameter band for the trim.

3. Pin right sides together, and sew the raw edge of the trim. Turn it right side out. (Another amendment: I see that what I did here was double the fabric, fold it again, and sew 4 thicknesses together. It would have been far easier to open the fabric up to its full height, sew right sides together, and then fold the wrong sides together. You end up with the same shape for much less headache.)

4.  Fold your red fabric in half with the selvedge running along the length, and cut a hat shape from your red fabric. The base should be the same width as your trim, and the height is roughly the height of your yardage, or whatever looks right. You can see I was just winging it here, but it only needs to sit on the head and flop over so anything pointy will work. I chose not to make a symmetrical cone in favor of maximizing the stretch of the knit. That means the hat opening runs perpendicular to the selvedge and the point runs off a little to the side (so that there is only one seam). If you are using a furry or napped fabric, as I was here, remember to run the nap in the direction you want it before cutting.

5. Fold with right sides together and stitch the cut edge closed. Pinning helps with a soft or slippery fabric. Turn right side out.

6. Cut and stitch the lining fabric the same as for the red cap. Next, with the lining wrong side out and the cap right side out, slip the cap into the lining, matching up the two seams. Right sides should be facing each other.

showing the opening on the left

pulling the hat through the opening

white lining needs to be pushed into the red cap

7. Stitch the opening of the cap closed, leaving a 2" gap to turn. Then pull the hat right side out. You'll end up with the lining opposite the cap. Just push it in, poke it gently from the inside with a knitting needle or chopstick to define the point, and iron if necessary. If you are a stickler, you can handstitch the opening closed again, but I didn't do this since it all gets caught up in the trim, anyway.

trim: folded edge is up, raw edges are down

trim inside hat, ready to be stitched

8. Attach the lining in the same way. With the hat red side out, and the trim folded side down, slip the trim into the hat and pin around the edges.

9. Now you will legitimately have 4 thicknesses of fabric to sew through. I set the machine to the maximum stitch length and lightened the pressure foot a little. And then sewed very slowly. If your foot gets caught in the fur, as mine sometimes did, just backstitch aways, smooth the fur down, and stitch forward again.

10. The raw seam will be on the outside of the hat, like so.

trim folded up to cover raw seam

11. But when you fold the trim up, it will cover the seam. Sew it closed with a simple slipstitch.

12. The pom-pom: in this wonderful age of idea sharing, I still feel strongly about attribution so want to point you to  this video where I found the ingenious way of making a pom-pom to match the brim. Just cut a circle of fabric (this shows 9", but I ended up cutting it down to 7"), take a running stitch along the perimeter, and draw it closed around the fill of your choice: chopped up fabric scraps, as shown in the video and which I used here, or (preferably) some kind of light polyfiber stuffing that you have sitting around.

13. Trim down the ends of your gathered ball, and hot glue it to the point of the cap. I actually sewed the pom-pom to the cap before gluing it, as you can see above, using the gathering thread and taking the needle down through the point of the cap and lining.

14. That's it. Here's the finished hat with the seam at the back. Now that I think about it, that shape works really well for the sloping line from forehead to back of head.

In any case, it fits C's big head and he loves it. And since he chose to remove his hair in the dead of winter, I'm doubly glad that the hat is lined and seamless.

homemade halloween costumes (iPhone)

Halloween feels most...Halloweenlike...(by which I mean most like Halloween as I remember it, well before the advent of the sexy costume and the expensive lawn decor) when the kids have some involvement in creating their costumes. We have had years when we bought particular costumes or props, but it's more fun to make something—and most fun when the maker is also the costume wearer.

As soon as they were able to, I used to ask the kids to draw a picture of the costumes they envisioned. From there we'd figure out how to put them together; there was always at least one step the kids could do themselves. The point wasn't to approximate anything manufactured or even Martha Stewart-style homemade, but simply to learn how to actualize an idea. Even as a tot S could tell us that he wanted to be a fire truck, not a fireman, and that the truck should have wheels and lights (above).

This process paid off the year C made a wraith costume, because I had no idea what a wraith was and was unable to help him work it out. Undeterred, he designed a simple robe pattern from newspaper, sewed it together, and even fashioned a funky hood using wire and a black stocking to obscure his face. I can see by the date on the photo that he was 11, the same age S is this year.

This year S decided he wanted to be an iPhone. He knew exactly how he was going to make the costume, too, so tore ahead with his project, accepting only minimal help. Apparently in our family 11 is the age at which costuming confidence really takes off.

Step One involved finding some stiff-but-lightweight board material (in this case, foamcore from OfficeMax), cutting off the corners, and spray painting it black.

Next he located an Apple logo, printed the outline, cut it out, and glued it to one of the boards. I thought it might be the perfect time to explain ratios and proportions...but it wasn't. S wanted it done quickly and preferred to eyeball everything. He said, "It's a costume, Mom! It's for one night. It'll look good enough." And he was right.

We lucked into finding a set of app images ready to print, but it would have been only another few steps to create our own using a screen shot of the phone and a postermaking site. These were arranged and glued to the front boardpiece.

The costume was finished with shiny duct tape and a recent discovery: metal strapping. Metal strapping is thin, flexible, galvanized steel, pre-punched with two-different sized holes into which one can insert nails, screws or bolts. A roll costs a dollar or so. How many ways will we find to use this, I wonder?

The duct tape became the edge of the phone—

—and the strapping shaped into a shoulder harness from which to hang it all.

Voila! A sandwich-board iPhone, visualized and largely created by S himself. It was quick and inexpensive to make, should hold up through the night of Halloween unless there's rain and most importantly, it turned out just like its creator wanted it to. Nothing better than that.

by the seat of one's pants

A friend mentioned that her son needed historically accurate trousers for his overnight ELP at Sutter's Fort. Because I'd made a pair for my older son when he participated in the same program 7 years ago, I offered to help. It's the kind of project I like: unusual, only partially defined, and where a willingness to dive in and improvise matters more than precision or skill.

This is what we had to go on. It's a couple of pages from the very detailed costume book that Sutter's Fort provides ELP participants.

I had also spent a day with a historical re-enactor in 2002 and remembered her comments about period clothing--specifically, that pants were not tailored the way they are today so had saggy bottoms or at best, a loose-fitting gusset between the legs. Zippers were yet to be invented: flies were held together with buttons, and pants were usually held up with suspenders or a buckle in the rear which could tighten at the waist (all seen in the details of the above images).

We did not use a pattern, but measured waist and leg length, and cut with plenty of room for error.

Cathy had a yard or so of beautiful brown wool. From this we cut four leg pieces (front/back & left/right), which she sewed together. She had not sewn with a machine before but possessed an innate deftness that impressed me. The things we learn about our friends, even after years of knowing them!

After the legs were made, we needed front straps to pull the waist together and to fasten the fly to (see image in lower right corner of Sutter's Fort costume illustrations, above). We cut a newspaper pattern to test it first and to be sure the pieces were the same size. There were four pieces in all, sewn right sides together and turned.

At this point we began to bear down and focus, as time was an issue. The trousers were to be worn for the first time two days after we began making them. We had afternoon hours only, so were in a bit of a crunch.

Waist straps were attached to the top of the rear leg pieces, while the top of the front leg pieces were shaped into a fly flap. We added a diamond-shaped gusset. Now the trousers looked like this:

If you're thinking they look a little wide for a 10-year-old boy, you are much more observant than I was. They were, in fact, huge.

But the beauty of sewing by the seat of one's pants is that fixing is built into the process. Here is Cathy trimming excess fabric after having sewn a new seam a couple inches in.

We also had to rip out and redo the gusset, and then the trousers began to look more like what we had in mind.

Buttonholes were made on the machine, not by hand. But had there been time, handmade buttonholes would have been very nice.

To shape the waist, we simply added a casing and put a drawstring in the back. Again, this was a matter of time and getting them to a wearable state as quickly as possible.

I'd like to be able to tell you that this was a beautiful homeschooling moment, and that our boys (Cathy's two and my younger) were eagerly cutting and sewing alongside us. But in fact, they were running around outside using each other as targets.

They only reluctantly came in for the necessary fittings, then ran outside again.

I still call this a great homeschooling day. Because even in all that running around, I know they were at least vaguely aware of the fact that we were creating something, solving a problem piece by piece and hour by hour. And although my kids no longer think it's cool, they both have experience sewing--which is really just another way of constructing something from nothing. In years past we have made quilts and clothing, toys and costumes together. They started by drawing their ideas on paper, thought about how they would put it together, and finally, stitched--first by hand, and later, with the machine.

Unschooling can only work when we aren't invested in having our children acquire a specific body of knowledge. If my kids leave home without the ability to do higher math, without having read The Deerslayer, without playing the piano or speaking French…so be it. What I want for them is more abstract: to be able to meet the situations and challenges in their lives, know they can handle them, and hopefully, enjoy the process along the way. That's nothing I can teach, per se--it's an acquired attitude, one which comes piece by piece and hour by hour, as one continues to do things by the seat of one's pants and realize that it all works out just fine.