How to Make Winter Hats

Winter hats can be made from heavy or quilted fabric, felt, suede, leather, fur, wool or fleece. They can be made with or without earflaps, pompoms or ties. You should try several styles to see what looks best before making any hat, if you want to use fur, leather or velvet. Hats can be sewn, pieced together with lacing or crocheted. Many hats are also knitted.

Things You'll Need

• Measuring tape
• Hat fabric, leather, fur or yarn
• Crochet hooks (H, I or J)
• Needle and thread
• Two small margarine lids or
• Two large margarine lids

Instructions

Fleece

1. 

   Wrap a measuring tape all the way around your head at your hairline and from ear to ear over your head. Cut a rectangle of fleece whose length is your ear-to-ear measurement, and whose width is half the circumference of your head. Add 4 inches to your ear-to-ear measurement if you want a hat you can roll up.

2. 

   Fold the fleece in half across the long sides so that the two short sides are together. Turn the hat so that the open bottom is facing you and the fold is facing away from you. Trim off the two top corners at a 45 degree angle along the fold. Do not cut the bottom corners. This will transform the hat from a square to a six-sided figure. The base of the hat shape will be the opening for your head. The base and the right and left sides will all be nearly the same length, depending on your head measurements. The fold will become the top of the hat.

3. 

   Stitch up the right and left sides and across the two corners that you cut off along the fold in the previous step, about 1/4 inch from the open edges of the fabric, leaving the bottom of the hat open.

4. Use a ladder stitch along the open bottom edge of the hat to ensure that the fleece will not ravel later. Do not sew the bottom of the hat shut when you do this. To prevent sewing the bottom shut, keep your hand inside the hat while you sew, and push your needle through the fabric from inside the hat to the outside. Turn the hat inside out.

5. 

   Cut two margarine bowl lids into two matching circles. Snip from the outside to the center and cut a smaller circle. This makes a circular pompom maker with a slice in it.

6. 

   Cut fleece into 1/4 inch wide strips. Hold the two pompom makers you cut in Step 5 together in one hand, and place the end of a fleece strip in between them. Wrap the fleece around the two pompom makers until you cover them from end to end, beginning 1/2 inch from the right of the slice in the pompom maker and ending 1/2 inch from the left of the slice.

7. 

   Tie the ends of the fleece together and pull tight. Insert scissors between the two pompom maker pieces and cut all of the fleece loops. Pull the two tied ends even tighter to make a fluffy pompom. Trim the pull strings to the same length as the rest of the pompom and stitch it to the top of your fleece hat.

Round Crochet With Popcorn Stitch

1. Pinch the end of your skein of yarn between your thumb and the second knuckle of your left hand, if you are right handed. Use your thumb against the second knuckle of your right hand if you are left-handed. Wrap your yarn over your forefinger, behind your middle finger and back around, so that you have two bends of yarn over your forefinger. Lay the loose end of the yarn between your forefinger and middle finger. Interweave Crochet Magazine online has a photo tutorial on starting a slipknot and making a chain to begin a new project.

2. Insert your crochet hook up through the loop of yarn on your middle finger, over the end of the yarn that is between your two fingers and back down through the loops around your forefinger. Pull tight. This should make a slipknot. It may take several tries before you get a nice, tight slipknot. Use a lark's head knot if the slip knot gives you too much trouble. To make a lark's head knot, wrap the yarn around your hook three times and pull a loop of the loose end of the yarn through all the loops, leaving 2 inches or so of the loose end of the yarn hanging from the end of the knot.

3. Continue to hold the working end of the yarn in your off hand and the crochet hook end in your dominant hand, with the yarn pressed against your second knuckle with your thumb. Hook the yarn and pull it through the original loop. Repeat three more times to make a short chain.

4. Poke your hook through the original loop and pull it through to connect your chain into a ring. Single crochet in the ring all the way around for one row. Make one extra loop and close the row. Continue with eleven more round rows of single crochet to make the top of your hat.

5. Use the popcorn stitch to make the sides of your hat. Do a single crochet, three doubles and another single in each stitch from the previous row. When you get back to the beginning of the row, make an extra loop and start the next row. Use popcorn stitch for six or more rows, until your hat reaches your ears when you put it on your head. Do not make extra loops when closing the sides, or your hat will eventually get too loose for your head.

6. Finish with four rows of double crochet and two rows of single crochet.

References

• Interweave Crochet Magazine: 2005 Glossary of Terms
• YouTube: Crochet Popcorn Stitch

Resources

• Susan Bates: Craft Yarn Council of America: Making Pom Poms
• YouTube: Lark's Head Knot