FOs with pictures...

Okay, so TECHNICALLY these aren't, you know, knitting, but they are things that I did make, so why not share them?

We're at that point where the winter stuff is pretty much all gone from the stores, but we've got at least another month, probably more like 6 weeks, of hat weather. Somehow all of my older son's hats have disappeared. I think I might have left one in VT, I'm not sure. So, sure, I could go buy him yet another hat, but instead I decided to make them! I didn't have a pattern, I pretty much just winged it, and there's definitely changes I would make. So, we're at the stage where it's hard to get a good picture of the boys, but here they are.

Both hats were done the same way, and both have things that make them not perfect, but they're wearable. I did the littler guy's hat first. It's hard to tell, but this was the splurge fleece, it's John Deere. He likes tractors, that kid. Since I am from VT, that seems most appropriate to me. I measured his head at about 19" (I had to use a piece of string, because all of my measuring tapes have disappeared. I used Malabrigo at first but it's too stretchy to get an accurate length). I used about 1.5" of ease, but in retrospect, I should have used more like 3". It fits him, but it's snug. And this was after I cut a piece that was too small! Third time's the charm? I made a rectangle of 14" x 20.5". I put the right sides together and sewed a tube and closed off one end. First I just rolled the brim, but I didn't like having the raw seam showing, so I turned under a deep hem (for that one, maybe about 3.5" or so, I think a bit deeper is better), and then folded that back. Done. I think it's really quite cute, actually! You could also do pom-poms on the points, but honestly, I just don't have that kind of energy right now.

I did the same thing for my older son's hat - this fleece is super-cute, it's dogs and fire hydrants (I'd say he's just on the borderline of being too old for it, it's probably more appropriate for a toddler than a kid his age but he liked it). I made this one a bit taller, 15", I think, and used about 3" of ease for his head. On this one, I did a much deeper hem (5"), which makes the hat a tad shorter. In fact, I think it's almost too short. If you pull the brim down more, you can see the seam where I sewed it. I'm sure there's a more clever way to do the brim than this, but I couldn't think of it.

For the last hat, I really wanted to do more of a stocking hat. I folded the fleece in half and cut down the whole yard of fabric, I think I did a width of about 12.5" (so the whole piece would be 25" wide). This did result in a hat that's a bit loose on him. It's sort of hard to describe how I did the cut. I cut the fabric on the diagonal, but not corner to corner. I hit about 4" up on the long side on each side, and cut diagonally that way. I screwed up the top = I wanted to leave two short pieces hanging to tie fringe with, but I sewed them on the wrong side. Ooops. Oh well. Then I just seamed up the side, and did the same hem thing. Right now this cap ends flat, rather than to a point, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. DS says he likes it the way it is, but I think it looks a bit...well, different from my vision.

Overall, though, I'm really pleased. These are quick and easy projects, and now they have hats! DS2 wants a bug stocking cap too, so I think I'll try to put fringe on his (and make it a bit smaller too).

The top hats are so easy, literally it's two seams and you're done. These would be fantastic and easy hats to make for donation, and you could get about 6 hats out of 1 yard of fleece.