Summer!

Finally, it feels like we might have a summer.  If it stays just slightly warmer than it is now, I'll be happy.  Weather like this calls for a floppy sun hat!

 This was made for my niece's 10th birthday coming up.  She's very active, hiking and living in New Mexico, summer camp in Ontario.  A hat that travels well is perfect for her.  I chose this fabric because it was young but not childish and the colours work well with her blue eyes and with the other gift I made her that I'll blog about later.  It's two fat quarters from Wal-Mart!  I've never really looked at fat quarters, but I see how people get addicted to them!

 The inside of the hat is another fat quarter.  I'm not keen on green for the inside, I'm afraid it will reflect off the skin and make the wearer look odd.  But there's also pink in there.

 As soon as I laid out the first pattern piece on this fabric, I discovered a big issue.  The hearts were just slightly bigger than the pattern piece, and when you take into account the seam allowances, it would be hard to tell it 's a heart  :( I can "pattern match" at  the seams, right? 

 Well.  Apparently pattern matching works only for straight seams! 

 I did the best I could, trying to match up the top parts of the hearts.  I knew there would be no way I could match up piece six with piece one, so I didn't even try (below).  I had trouble sewing the pieces together--I had labelled each edge A/B, B/C, C/D, D/E, E/A.  Except....there are six pieces!!  I got that sorted out as best as I could.

 The sixth piece.  Well.  Due to the very large repeat, and the hearts being in rows of one row upright, one row upside down, I couldn't get the last piece to fit anywhere where it could match up with piece 5.  I couldn't even get it to fit somewhere so the heart would be at about the same level as the rest of the hat!  I decided to piece the last piece.  That took some trial and error, and the top of the section (below) worked better than the bottom corner (above).

 I was a little disappointed in how the top lined up.  It's not too noticeable with all the print, so I left it.

 The green gave me no troubles, in the cutting and sewing together.  Until it came time to sew the brim on.  The blue side went together pretty well, it was just off a little bit.  The green?

Ugh.  I eased it, I stretched it, I finally restitched the seam.  I was just too big.  The whole hat feels a bit smaller than mine.  I think what happened is that the green pieces were placed crosswise to what they should be.  There's no grain line on the pattern.  You'd think, small pieces, it's just a hat with cotton....it doesn't matter.  But one direction, the fabric has a bit of natural stretch.  And I guess I got it wrong!  Hopefully it still fits.  She has a big head, but much of that is hair, LOL!  I added a pink ribbon and the white slide lock from my hat.

I really like the pattern and the end result, though it really eats fabric for the brim!! I bought a meter of the stiff interfacing (maybe it should be woven interfacing instead of non-woven), and I'll be able to get only two hats (with some left over).  I wonder if I can cut the pattern piece in half, slightly overlapped, and do that.  I am going to take about 1/4" off the brim length (each side, so 1/2").  Three out of four brims have been too large, so I think it needs it.