How to Make Ear Flap Hats with Animal Skins
Whether you've skinned an animal that you shot on a hunting expedition or have simply bought a stretch of animal skin, you may want to consider using some of the skin to make an ear flap hat. Ear flap hats are exceptionally warm, especially when made out of a material like animal skin. They are not easy to make and involve some complicated folding and manipulation of the skin. But, once made, they will be a long lasting addition to your winter wardrobe. Does this Spark an idea?
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Instructions
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Cut your animal skin into an 11-inch by 23-inch rectangle with a razor blade.
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Take hold of the two 11-inch sides of the rectangle and loop them around so that the two 11-inch sides are touching each other. Overlap the two 11-inch sides by half an inch. Stitch the sides together with thread and a needle. The end result should be and cylinder 23 inches in circumference and 11 inches tall.
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Place the cylinder around the head of a mannequin. Twenty-three inches is the average circumference of a male head, so the cylinder should fit tightly. Take the edges of the top of the cylinder, and press them together, folding them in toward the top of the mannequin's head as you do. The edges of what was once the circumference of the circle should now be folded into a linear seam. Hold this seam in place with pins. Sew the seam together with thread and needle, removing the pins as you go. When finished, the cylinder will have a flat top. The skin that you bent while folding in the edges of the cylinder will jut out in two angles, one in the front of the seam and one in the back giving the hat an anvil shape for the time being.
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Grab the angles of fabric by their corners, and fold their corners into the center of the hat. Hold them in place with pins. Stitch the angles to the body of the hat. The result should be a hat that hugs the contours of the head and has an X-shaped seam on the top.
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Cut four 5.5-inch equilateral triangles from your animal skin. Put two on top of each other so that their sides and corners are flush. Do the same with the other two. Stitch both pairs of triangles together, keeping the stitches as close to the edge as possible. Stitch together two sides. For both triangles, reach inside the open third side, grab the interior corner of the triangle and pull it so that you turn the triangle inside out. This will hide the stitch line on two sides. Stitch the last open side together in the same fashion as the other two.
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Mark two points on exact opposite sides of your hat's circumference. The circumference is the length of the circle that is found on the open end of the hat. It can be measured by measuring out 11.5 inches with a tape measure from any given point on your hat's circumference and marking both ends of the 11.5-inch length with a pin. The pin should be placed near the bottom edge of the hat.
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Take the side of the triangle in which the stitch line is not hidden, and mark the very center of that side with a pin. The center can be found by measuring 2 and 3/4 inches in from either of the side's corners.
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Align the center of the triangle's side with the point on the hat marked with a pin. Make sure that your triangle's side overlaps the hat's bottom edge by about half an inch. Stitch the triangle's side to the hat's edge, removing the pins as you go. Repeat this process with the other triangle. Make sure to align the other triangle's center with the pin on the opposite end of the circumference.
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Turn the hat inside out to hide all of the stitch lines. The end result should be a snugly fitting animal skin hat with two ear flaps. If you want, you can punch holes in the bottom corners of the two ear flaps and tie string through each hole. This will let you tie the flaps together around your chin in the winter.
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References
- Photo Credit textures animal image by Sergey Galushko from Fotolia.com
