Kids Fedora Hat Sewing Pattern Review

I made a hat. Yay! When Elegance and Elephants came out with their new Kids Fedora Hat Sewing Pattern, I knew it was on my ‘must sew’ list for this season. And then when Heidi from Elegance and Elephants asked me to join her pattern tour, I jumped at the chance to sew up this adorable pattern.

I have never sewn a structured hat before. I have sewn casual sun hats, but nothing like this type of hat and I am always interested in stretching my sewing skills to see if I can handle something new. My girls absolutely adore hats. When I originally saw the pattern, I thought I would make this for my little guy, but he is in a ‘I’m not so wild about hats’ phase and I didn’t know if he would get much wear out of it. So the girls lucked out and I decided to make a girly version for them.

All of my kids have enormous heads so all three of them fell in the XL size category. So Savannah and Matilda will be able to share this hat, but I made it in blue since that’s my little Matilda’s favorite color.

I purchased this wool blend fabric about a year and a half ago at Vogue Fabrics in Evanston, IL when I was working on my book. I was going to use it for one of the coats in the book, but some of the other fabrics won out and this has been sitting in my stash just waiting to be used. I still want to make a coat out of it since it is a gorgeous shade of aqua blue, but I thought it would be so sweet and girly on this structured hat.

This hat took some seriously heavy-weight interfacing. I would say the pattern was an intermediate level pattern, not because the pattern was difficult, but because if you aren’t completely comfortable with maneuvering fabric and heavy-weight interfacing into your machine, the interfacing could get bunched up and end up with puckers. But I am over the moon with how professional looking this hat turned out! I think it looks like I could have bought it in a store, don’t you think?

And you know me, I can’t ever do a project without some type of patterned fabric. I used this print from Josephine Kimberling’s “Hope Chest” line for Blend Fabrics for the hat band and added a bow detail (which is not included in the pattern). The inside of the hat is also lined with this printed fabric. The hat is as pretty on the inside as it is on the out.

A professional looking garment or accessory is all in the finishing and this pattern has excellent finishing techniques. I love the double rows of topstitching on the top of the hat and the lining on the inside of the hat. I actually used single-fold bias binding to conceal the seam on the inside of the hat. I attached it by machine for the first row of stitching and then sewed the rest of it by hand using a whip-stitch. The pattern calls for using twill tape and I simply didn’t have any on hand.

The girls have already grabbed this hat several times and wanted to wear it so I am super-excited that they love it. I told the girls that this hat was for sharing, but Matilda thinks it’s hers and Savannah wants one of her own, so I guess I’ll be making another one soon. Miss Savannah has requested orange……..luckily I have a pretty persimmon colored wool hiding in my stash. I truly adore the way this hat came out and I’m really, really proud of it. Don’t you love that? When you finish sewing a pattern and are just tickled over how it turned out. I highly recommend any of Heidi’s patterns……she has some absolutely darling designs and I have never heard anything but praise for the fit and construction techniques used in her patterns.

If you are interested in purchasing this Fedora Hat Pattern, Elephants and Elegance is offering you all a 15% discount on this pattern with the coupon code: FEDORA 15. (Click here to purchase the pattern). Discount available from September 23, 2013 through September 27, 2013.

And to check out more adorable Fedora Hats being created on the pattern tour, check out these pattern tour stops: