Floral Bucket Hats

Two more Oliver & S Bucket Hats to match the new outfits. I made them together, assembly line style, and got them done in about a day.

I made the same modification as I did the first time I made them: adding 1.5cm at the brim. Next time, I will grade out the side seams of the brim to get less of a bucket and more of a sunhat. The wider brim comes down very low.

Rather than make them reversible, these are lined in the same fabric, the Isle of Wight polycotton. I wanted to use it all up. The hat does take quite a lot of fabric. The brims are very curved and it is not possible to lay them out in such a way that one cut line forms the next cut for the next pattern piece. I confess that I did not line up all the brims on grain, you can get a lot more hat for your fabric if you ignore grainlines. I figured with the heavy interfacing, and floppy brim, grain was not  going to matter overly much. I kept all the crown pieces on grain.

I ran out of polycotton for the last brim piece so I used a piece of red quilting cotton. I was too stingy to make the whole inside brim of the red but this makes a nice sunshade and helps us to tell the two hats apart.

I assembled the final hats in the same way as last time, following the instructions up to the very end and then stitching the inside crown by hand. I had no other external stitching and no hatband so I didn’t want the stitching to show from the machine finishing.

These are a really cute addition to the outfits, I recommend making them any time you have about 50 - 75cm left over. Plus, with a free pattern and leftover fabric, they are almost a free hat!