Thursday 17 January 2013

A reversible summer hat for R


This reversible hat languished in an 'unfinished things' pile on my sewing table until today, when I fished it out, hammered in a couple of eyelets and turned it into a reversible hat with reversible straps.


The pattern is the Oliver + S reversible bucket hat (free download here) but as described in a previous post I widened the brim, because although the original design is cute, it's not much use for sun protection. I love the widened interfaced brim - it gives excellent coverage and can be folded up at the front if less sun protection is required.


To keep the hat on R's head (because it always seems to be windy round here) I made bias tape from the green material which I used for the 'inside' of the hat and sewed a little rectangle of velcro at the ends. I put little white eyelets in each side of the hat and threaded the strap through so that it forms a half-band around the back of the hat before becoming straps underneath . Technically, you could now reverse the hat and still have straps - all that's required is to unthread the strap and rethread it through the eyelets. However, the eyelets don't look so great from the other side. I tried to find eyelets (or grommets) that looked good from both sides, but it seems that no such thing is available (if any readers know otherwise, please tell me!). The unsatisfactory hardware options were what made me abandon the hat in the unfinished pile, where it languished for a couple of months until today's hot weather made me decide to settle for the not-quite-good-enough eyelets so R could finally wear the thing.


So now we have a very sun-smart and almost completely reversible hat, perfect for pottering around the garden on a 40-degree day.

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