Fleece Hats

It's starting to get cold here in Wellington. I'm fortunate to have good heating and warm clothes for me and my family, but there are a lot of people that do not. I decided that I wanted to do something to make winter a little warmer for some of these families, so I came up with the idea to make hats for school aged kids and donate them to KCA who will distribute them to children who really need them. I could have whipped up a bunch of plain hats in no time, but I wanted the kids to have something fun & funky. I won't be able to make cool head coverings for all of the children in my area that need and deserve them, but I can make it a slightly more comfortable winter for some. I was really keen to make hats for school aged kids rather than toddlers and babies because I feel that sometimes the older kids get forgotten about and I wanted them (or at least a few) to have something that was new and made just for them with love.

So where to start? By searching the internet of course! I found some really awesome and complex fleece hat tutorials, but I decided to limit myself to simple (yet funky) ones so that I could make as many as possible in my limited free time. All of the hats I made were based on this free pattern.

 

I did all the cutting out one night in front of the tv - I cut out 14 hats with matching ears/dinosaur spikes and then realized I should probably stop there and actually sew a few up to decide if the pattern was any good before wasting all of my fabric! I started sewing them up the next day and they sewed up nicely, easily, and quickly (a perfect combination). My favourites ended up not having any ears or spikes at all, but just a ribbon threaded around the bottom like in this version of the same pattern. I had enough fabric to make another 9 hats, so I did. I ended up making plain ones with cute appliques on them - and one more ribbon one.

I didn't hem the hats I made. I decided not to for 3 reasons:

1. I don't have a serger/overlocker, so in order for the hats to still have some stretch I would have to do a zig zag stitch and the first one I tried just didn't look very nice. (*I did a zig zag ruffle on the edges of a few kitty ear hats which looked really cute, but also made them very girly so I didn't want to do it to all of them.)
2. The pattern is a little too short for much of a hem, and I wanted the hats to be really wearable and cover the kids' whole heads & keep their ears warm too.
3. Polar fleece won't fray, so I really didn't need to and it would save me some time which would allow me to make a couple of extra hats. ;)

When I started making the hats neither of my kids were remotely interested in having one of their own, but once I finished them all both kids quickly chose one to model and then didn't want to take it off! So it looks like I need to make one more kitty hat and another "rah rah" (dinosaur) hat for my littlies... 

My kitty's a little too small to fill out this hat properly.
But look at that cute little face, I guess I'll be making one more of these...

The little guy immediately started running around saying "rah, rah" when he
put this one on. I'll take that as him approving of my work ;)