I picked up this ball of yarn at Fabricville. I don’t usually buy yarn there because they’ve mainly sold Kroy and I find it too heavy to knit comfortably and I don’t like the weight of the socks. However, a couple of months ago I noticed they’d stocked a much nicer sock yarn, lighter, softer, so I bought this ball.

The socks turned out nicely. Somebody will enjoy wearing them!

Then this past week I decided to make a new sunhat for myself. My friend Deb was giving a class on the Closet Core Sunhat. It’s a free pattern with instructions and a tutorial. I traced a copy of her size 22 hat, bought some fabric, then got to work. Deb had done some prep work on the pattern – reducing the 5/8″ seam allowance to 3/8″ which made sewing the seams much easier (next time I make it, I’ll reduce the seams to 1/4″).

This isn’t my first sunhat. I wanted a reversible hat – one that I could wear on either side. I didn’t follow the instructions. What I did, instead, was to make an outside hat, and an inside hat, then fit them together with the open edge the edge of the brim. I thought about finishing that raw edge with a binding, but instead used a bunch of small squares I had leftover from some previous sunhats (the colours blended/contrasted with the colours in the fabrics I used). I did some heavy free-motion sewing around the edge, securing the squares, using variegated Sulky thread both top and bottom. To finish the hat, I sewed a spiral, using my presser foot as guide, starting from where the brim attaches to the crown to meet the trim at the brim edge.

What makes this hat work as well as it does is the interfacing! I interfaced both the inside and outside hats with a stiff interfacing I normally use for the front placket of a shirt. That was a bit of overkill – I probably could have just done the outside hat and not the inside hat (that’s what I’ll do when I make the hat for my niece – at least until I see whether it makes the crown stiff enough or not). I also included a heavyweight fusible interfacing in the brim which has made it very stiff which I’m most happy with.

I also came across a very nice wide brimmed summer hat from Spruce Crafts. It comes in S/M/L sizes with separate pattern pieces for each size.

Then there’s my original instructions for drafting your own sunhat pattern.