Quick and Easy Frog Hat

Greetings!

I need to start this instructable by apologizing for the photo quality.  My camera seems to be on the fritz.  I did the best I could, but several photos are fuzzy.  I think you'll get the idea, though.

I made this for my god-son for Christmas.  He's two years old and lives in the snowy mountains so a warm toasty and playful hat makes the perfect gift.  This hat could be sized up for adults, too, though so don't be limited by color or size.  The possibilities for animal motifs are many.  I chose to make a frog because I had some extra herringbone fabric in two-tone greens.

This project should take about an hour and will require:

 

• 1/2 yard faux shearling fabric for fuzzy lining
• 1/2 yard decorative fabric for outside
• sewing machine
• sewing scissors
• pen
• needle
• black and white thread
• black yarn or ribbon
• iron (you might not really need these.  I didn't use them, but if you have a more 'ironable' fabric, it might help to iron when you turn the hat inside out or to iron the back seam open for stitching)
• ironing board
• *white fabric
• *black fabric
• *fabric glue (I used Aleene's washable)
• **serger

*These last three could be substituted with plastic googly-eyes or buttons.  I chose fabric to reduce the chance the googly-eyes will fall off and he will swallow them, and because my god-son's family is getting away from plastics.

**I hardly ever sew without my serger anymore, but this isn't necessary.  The boucle herringbone fabric I used tends to fray, so it needed to be serged.  Another option is to zig-zag stitch on your regular sewing machine.

So... if you have everything together, on to step one!
 

Step 1 Measure, draft, and cut.

1.  Measure your head.  Obviously, if this is a gift, you'll have to measure your giftee's head.  Or guess.  You can also google standard hat sizes if you really do need an educated guess for the hat size.

Keep in mind that the shearling lining takes up a bit of room in the hat, so you may have to size your pattern up by about 1/2 an inch in order to accommodate your fabric selection.

2.  Draft the pattern.  Use your measurements to sketch a pattern.  I do this right on my fabric.  You could do this on a cheap muslin fabric if you need to check sizing first.  Newspaper also works well as a pattern paper.  

If you cut the shearling and outer fabric the same size, the shearling will show on the outside just a bit.  This is how I wanted mine, but you may choose to cut your outer fabric slightly larger than the shearling lining to make sure the lining isn't seen on the outside. 

Also, this pattern is uber-simple.  It's two pieces plus the eyes.  If you're having difficulty visualizing the pattern itself, think of it as a cylinder with the bottom part missing.

3.  Cut out your pattern.   Using your very sharp sewing scissors, cut your pattern out.  Remember to leave a seam allowance; this is usually 5/8" all around. 

Comments

[wjbond7]

This is sooooo cute. I want an adult version. How about a "cookie" monster?