How to stretch a New Era fitted hat

A New Era hat, ready to be stretched

This article will teach you how to stretch a fitted hat that has shrunk. You will not need water, a soccer ball, magic, or anything like that. If you have one knee that can bend, you can stretch your hat and have it fitting again in no time.

Things You'll Need

• One fitted hat that is too small for your head
• One human knee

Instructions

1. 

   Sit down and bend your knee to about a 80-90 degree angle, like in the picture.

2. 

   Set your fitted hat on your knee as if it were your head, pointing the brim towards you. At this point, you can pretend like your knee is actually your head. Sometimes I say things to my kneeself, like, 'Hey, nice hat!'

3. Now grab the hat by the brim (as in the picture above) and pull it towards you. You can pull it pretty hard as the hat is pretty sturdy.

4. You should hear a popping sound. I think that is a seam popping, but I'm not entirely sure. This step is kind of like magic. You pull on the hat, something pops, but the hat shows no signs of damage. You're left with a nicely fitting hat (assuming the hat actually fit you at one point in time. We're not performing miracles here.).

5. Even if you don't hear a popping, the hat should have stretched a bit, and it will probably now fit. This is especially true if you've already stretched the hat. New Era hats have a tendency to shrink even after a stretching, so you may have to do this every now and again.

Tips & Warnings

• Wearing your hat every day is the best way to keep it from shrinking. If you have a few hats you like, try switching between them every couple days to keep them all fitting snugly

• Hat stretchers are essentially temporary heads for you hat. If you like spending money and want to keep your hats fitting, you can buy one of those at your local hat store.

• This might sound obvious, but your hair length plays a big part in whether or not your hat will fit you. If you find that your regular hat doesn't quite fit right any more, it may be time for a hair cut.

• New Era hats are super high quality and durable, even though they do shrink. I cannot vouch for other hats, especially counterfeit ones. So if you decide to employ this technique on a lesser quality hat, and it tears in half, I'm sorry!

• I'd say this technique is more for people who wear their hats every day, and not for those who wear hats to weddings, funerals, chick-meeting-places, etc. If you really want to preserve the condition of your hat but need to stretch it to fit, you probably shouldn't put your dirty hands on it and pull until the interior stitching gives way. You may want to seek other solutions.