Peter Pan hats

Brrrr!!! We woke up to a blizzard and a good couple of inches of snow.

I have never seen Josh jump out of bed so fast as when I told him the school was closed (I might have to try this more often). The good news is that there was no way out of our village as it sits in a basin and as a result my dearest was home for the day (yippee!). My mind went into overdrive with the kaleidoscope of opportunities the day was holding. Within a couple of minutes we devised a plan and I was in front of the drawing board trying to finally get to grips with the Peter Pan hat prototype. I had made a couple and none of them really seemed to look right for me, well today I sussed it and finally managed to make them. Now there are loads of tutorials for Peter Pan hats around, and having tried some of them without feeling satisfied, I have just done my own thing and it worked for me. 

 

 

 

So here's how I did it.

 

 

Firstly I cut a template out on some cheap blackout lining I had left as I didn't want to waste the felt, considering it's pricey. I bought 3/4 of a metres of felt for just under £8. Now you can use fleece which will be much cheaper, but I just didn't feel that the brim would hold its shape in the same way as the felt. Once I got the right shape (which was pretty much a triangle with a curved bottom), I cut out my felt hat and then machine stitch both the sides, leaving the bottom opening open.

 

 

Now this is where I made a mistake (as shown in the picture above). You need to leave around 3 inches, of however big you want your brim, unstitched (if such a word exists?!) at one end like this (unfortunately the picture doesn't do a very good job of showing this).

Then you need to turn your felt the right side out and then machine stitch the brim.

 

 

 

Then you turn your brim over and attach a feather, which you can either sew on or use the trusty glue gun as in my case. I think I am secretly attached to mine. Once I got the hang of it, it took next to no time at all to do. Some tutorials sew the brim on separately, which I tried, but there is definitely no need for this as the felt is heavy and thick and as long as you remember to leave 3 inches open at the bottom and sew from the right side then it looks the part. It also saves on time as the separate brim can be more time consuming.

For the rest of the day we enjoyed the snow. We made some snowmen, snow angels followed by much needed hot chocolate , in front of a cosy fire.

 

Note the position of the second carrot (ha-ha).

 Why do men always have to add it?!

 

Hope you have all enjoyed a less blistery day and if its been snowy, hope its all been good fun?