I Miss my Old Cap…

Last year I lost my dear a cap, you can still see it on my signature picture. I have found that it is time to get a new one, so two days ago, I googled hats, trying to find a nice design. By the way, the old cap model is called “poor boy’s cap” newsboy’s hat” or something like that. I found something that looked somewhat like the old one, but without a band around the head above the brim, and a brim that doesn’t stop in front of the ears but reaches behind the ears. You see, the hat I found, was kind of a more feminine, cute version.

What I was afraid of, was that my hat was going to look like a bonnet, you know, imagine an older woman two hundred years ago, with a sleeping hat. And the result, well, you can see for yourself…

Next time I will go closer to the original instructions, which look somewhat like this:

The distance A to B you measure on your own head, from forehead to backhead divided by two. Or from forehead to crown. Not the best illustration the world has ever seen:

The brim is harder to draw, I think. In the pattern drafting book it looks something like this:

How does my hat differ from the drawings above?
-I made it size 2 cm to larger so that I could take in 2 cm with elastics at the back. 1 cm would be better, I think.
-I let the letter B on the pattern lie a little bit closer to the centre than 4 cm, (5cm, I think), to make the hat a little bit higher.
-I made quite a large brim, both wider and deeper than the original style. Too much. I have cut away some of it, but still it is too much brim, I think.
-I made a construction mistake that led to too much curve at each pattern piece/panel. This you can recognise by the horisontal folds at the bottom of the hat just above the brim. Next time I will trust the instructions.
And: I used stretch manchester/cordfløyel, quite thick fabric. Next time I will use thinner fabric.

Maybe I will make another one, (and follow the instructions more closely). Maybe somebody else got inspired by this, and want to try to make one? Or, maybe somebody has good tips about constructing brims?

If you happen to get here from the RUMS-blog, you can return there by clicking here :-)

Fabrics: Cordfløyel from Stoff og Stil (I think…), lining from IKEA.
Drawings with help from this book: “Mønsterkonstruksjon og modellering” by Rigmor Haugsand