Upon my first flip through Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing, I immediately marked the Sun Hat for a first project - it just seems the perfect hat for this time of year. Yesterday, with two accidentally-napping babes (when Ezra naps it means an all night party later on), and one who wanted to sew on his own machine, I jumped into the Sun Hat sewing. Sweet. I miss naptime sewing.
Except....I had no idea how small my head was. No, really. The hat was HUGE. (And yes, I got the seam allowances right - really, it must just be my head. Gosh - what do you think this means?). I tried the big hat/big sunglasses look for a minute, but that didn't work. Hmn... Naturally, my ridiculous hat (and my persistant Dr. Suess quoting of 'Do You Like My Hat?'), had the babes cackling with laughter and ideas on just what the hat would be perfect for. A complete head cover? A pirates cap? An umbrella?
Calvin suggested I try it like this. Hmn. Not so much.
It was clear that it was too much hat for me. So I cut it down to this size by taking it apart, and taking off two inches on the crown (really - two inches! I'm telling you - SMALL head). I thought about cutting the brim as well, giving it frayed edges, but worried the interfacing would make that all funky.
So now that it fits, I'm loving this hat. I bought the fabric with this project in mind - it's from Heather Bailey's Freshcut line (Crysanthemum. Yum.). And the pattern - despite the sizing issues (that I'm assuming are only the fault of my small head, though I'll be happy to hear if the same thing happened to you when making it) -was very easy to follow. And those gazillion rows of topstitching called for on the brim? Love that. Topstitching is my friend.
