Bucket Hat

A bucket hat is a great sunny weather accessory to protect your eyes and your skin from the sun. This bucket hat doesn't require too much for supplies by making your own. You can get the right size and you can customize the fabric as well. The pattern for this hat is included with the video. So in the description below, you'll find a link to download that pattern in five different sizes.

It actually stitches together pretty quickly and easily and I'll walk you through it step by step. So the pattern, we will have three pieces. We have the crown piece, which is this piece up at the top. We have the side piece, which is this piece going around and then you've got, you're brim and these are all cut on the fold. So you won't have to print out a full piece.

I've done them on the fold. So when you cut this out, cut your fabric out on the fold for all the pieces. Now to figure out what size you want to cut out for yourself or whoever you're making it for, you want to do a little bit of measuring on yourself. So take your flexible measuring tape and measure around your head. So you want to go kind of around the back of your head where you would wear your hat and meet on your forehead and note that measurement.

And then you can look at the pattern and do some measuring on the pattern. So we're using 38 inch seam allowances. So you want to measure at the seam line. So if we were measuring this size extra small, we would measure 3/8 up from that cutting line from the fold and we would stop 3/8 inch in from this cutting line. And multiply that measurement by four because this is on the fold and we're using two of these pieces to go around the head.

So multiply that measurement by four and you can gauge um what size would be the best fit for your head. So from your pattern pieces, we're going to cut from the side, we're gonna cut two out of your outer fabric and two from your lining because we've got our lining fabric in here and our lining, we're only doing the crown and the sides. So you'll need a little less of your lining fabric than your outer fabric. You'll only need about a quarter yard of lining and about a half a yard of your outer fabric because we have these brim pieces. So from the side, we're cutting two fabric and two lining from the crown, we're cutting one out of your outer fabric and one out of your lining.

And then from the brim, you're going to cut four from your outer fabric because we've got these two on the upper side and then two on the under side. And you also want to cut four from interfacing. So this is the only part of the hat we're putting interfacing on. I like my hat to be a little bit more um flexible and Moldable when it's going around the head. Um When you add interfacing, even when it's a very lightweight interfacing, it does add crispness and body.

And I don't want that around my head. I want just these layers of breathable cotton fabric. So my interfacing is only going on my brim. The type of interfacing you use is up to you. You can use a very lightweight interfacing like a feather weight or a sheer weight or a regular lightweight fusible or even up to a medium weight fusible.

And it's going to change the way the brim hangs a little bit, it'll change how it looks a heavier weight interfacing, of course, is going to make that brim a little bit crisper. It's going to make it stick out from your head a little bit um more firmly. So on this one, I used a lightweight interfacing on all four layers and you can see how the brim it does. It still hangs a little bit and it makes it a little bit Moldable so you can kind of change the way it hangs when it's on your head. This one is for my daughter so it doesn't actually fit me.

Um But you can change the way the brim hangs by changing up the interfacing that you use. So on this one, I actually I fused. You want to fuse your, your brim interfacing pieces to the wrong side of your brim pieces. All four. I used a little bit of a heavier weight interfacing on this one.

So we'll be able to see um how that changes how the brim hangs versus this blue one that I made. So I can tell already that my brim piece is going to be a little bit crisper and a little bit firmer than my other one. So it will be interesting to see how that changes. So to start construction of our hat, we're gonna start with the side pieces of our outer fabric and these side pieces, one long curved edge is a little bit shorter than the other. So the shorter edge is the crown edge and the longer edge is the brim edge.

So we're going to place our side pieces right sides together and we're going to stitch each short edge using our 38 inch seam allowance. All right. So I've backs stitched at the beginning and end of my seam trim my, my threads and then we want to press these open. So I'm gonna bring my iron in and press my seam allowances open. Now, we're going to bring our crown piece in of our outer fabric.

Now, when you cut out your crown piece and when it is folded, I clipped a notch somewhere there, it is. So, uh when it's on the fold and you cut it out, clip a little notch in the fold on each side and that's gonna help match things up when we stitch this to our side pieces. So match one of your center points of your circle with one side scene of your side piece. And like I said, the shorter edge of this, uh the curved part, uh the long edge of your side scene, the seam of your side pieces, um that's the crown edge and the lower edge, the longer edge is your brim edge. So the crown goes in this shorter upper edge, right sides together.

So I'm matching my half points first. So there's my other notch in my crown that I'm matching with the side scene. And then we're going to match the raw edges all the way around and we're matching a curved edge to a straighter edge. So you're going to have to kind of manipulate the fabric a little bit and I'm trying to pin along my seam line. So we're using 38 inch seam.

There's some amount of easing that you're going to need to do here. So the crown being a circle, it's got a lot of uh biased edges and a lot of room for easing things in. So I'm kind of, I'm gently stretching that circle as I pin that in. And I like to pin um parallel to the seam line anyway, but it's extra helpful when you have to ease things in because that action of pinning sort of mimics your scene. All right.

So we've got half of that eased in. All right. So I'm gonna take this to my machine and stitch using my 38 inch seam allowance. And I like to stitch with the side piece up so that I can see what's going on. And I'm going to try not to get any tucks in that scene.

But if it happens, that's OK, it's going to be on the top of your head. So I'm stopping often to readjust and try to maneuver the fabric a little bit when it looks like I might get a tuck in my seam. I'm going to unpin that and try to readjust a little bit. And oftentimes you can smooth that out a little bit further down the seam. So back stitching at the end and on the wrong or the right side because I got, I got a couple of talks here and there, but that's ok with the, um, the print of my fabric, you don't really see it and it's a bucket hat so you can have some gathers up there.

So I'm going to take my pinking shears. And I'm going to trim this down by about half, getting rid of some of that bulk. So there is the crown, the upper part of the outside of your hat. And you can take this to the iron if you like and press this seam, nice and flat. Sometimes it's useful to, if you have a pressing ham, you can use your pressing ham to get that pressed.

So for your crown and your sides of your lining pieces, you're going to do the same thing. So here's my lining, my crown and my sides. The only other thing you need to do with the lining is the lower edge of your side pieces. We're going to turn up and press toward the wrong side 3/8 of an inch. So you can see how I did that.

I marked double my 3/8 of an inch from the raw edge. So that when I fold that up 3/8 of an inch, my raw edge is matching that line that I marked. So fold that up 3/8 of an inch to the wrong side and press that all the way around. And we're going to set that aside and bring in our brims. So for your brims, we're going to stitch them in pairs.

So this one right sides together, I've stitched my straight edges 3/8 inch. So we're going to do that to this one as well and just sort of chain pieced those scenes together just so I didn't have to clip my threads and start, start over and then I'm going to press these seam allowances open as well. So you can customize the interfacing that you use. Um a lot. As I mentioned, I'm actually using different interfacing for these two as I am for these two.

This interfacing is a little bit lighter weight like the interfacing I used for my blue hat, but the interfacing I used for these two brims is a little heavier weight. So I didn't want to make my brim so heavy. I didn't want to use the the heavier weight interfacing on all four brims. So I kind of mixed and matched. Now we're going to align our brims, open those up and we're going to align these aligning our seams and we are going to stitch this outer edge having interfacing fused to this curve really helps it stay put.

So it's not, it's not likely to stretch out on you. All right. So I'm going to stitch my 38 inch seam allowance on this long outer edge, make sure your steam ounces are open as you go over them. All right, now, we're going to pink this edge as well because we have a lot more circumference at the cut edge than we have at the seam line. So we want to get rid of some of that because we're going to be turning this right side out and we want this outer edge of the brim to be nice and smooth.

So I'm trimming this down by about half and then I'm going to bring my iron in and press this all the way around. Now, I mentioned I'm using quilting cotton for my hat for my daughter's hat rather because it is lightweight and breathable. It's the ideal fabric for a bucket hat. But if you have something, something uh a fiber blend that you want to use something that's lightweight but still stable enough, feel free. So I'm going to kind of roll this seam out with my fingers to make sure that this seam is right at the edge.

And we're gonna give it a good press all the way around and we're going to be top stitching this edge as well. So that's also going to help it be flat and crisp all the way around. All right. So now we're going to do a line of top stitching about a quarter inch from this edge. And you can see on my sample here, I did a couple extra lines of concentric top stitching and you can do as many lines in as you want.

You can go all the way in to the scene. But this one, this first line of top stitching is non-negotiable. You need to do at least one to hold all of your layers together and I'm going to bump my stitch length up a little bit for top stitching So I'm gonna go to a three millimeter length stitch roughly a quarter inch. You can do your top stitching a little bit closer to the edge if you want. Just make sure it's even all the way around.

When I go over my seam allowances, I'm going to slow down a little bit because we have a lot of layers and a lot of interfacing to go through when I reached where I began going to back stitch stitch over where you began by a couple of stitches and then we'll trim our threads so you can go as many lines of stitching as you want. Now, I'm going to base this inner circle to hold the layers together before we stitch the rest of our hat onto it. So I'm gonna bump my stitch length up to a basting length stitch just to tack these layers together and we're using a quarter inch seam allowance. So when we base or sorry, we're using 38 inch seam allowance. So when we base, we want to go at about a quarter inch seam allowance so that our basting stitch won't be visible when we do our final stitch tacking these layers together, makes it a little bit easier when we go to stitch everything together.

So you don't have to worry about these layers aligning because you know, they are tacked together right now. We're going to bring our, our crown and sides back in and we're going to stitch the lower edge, our last raw edge to our brim and we're going to align the side seam of the side piece with the side seam of the brims. And if it's a little bit hard for you to pin through all of these layers, because we've got a lot of interfacing to go through. If you have some clips, those can be really handy here. So again, we are stitching a, a curved seam or a curved edge rather to a straight or edge.

So we have a little bit of easing to do again. So I like to do a couple of clips going one direction and then move to the other side, readjust clips as necessary. And I like to stitch with my brim up so I can see what's happening. So we're gonna go to the machine, make sure when you're stitching the sides kind of want to fold up here. So as you're stitching, make sure that that is laying flat against the machine, you might find it easier to stitch with the side piece facing up and that is totally up to you.

So I'm keeping things flat as they go under the foot, as much as I can, keeping things flat on the under layer and stopping every so often to move the excess of brim to behind the needle, make sure you put your stitch length back down to your regular stitch length. So sometimes you'll need to lift up the presser foot and smooth out that brim underneath the foot and underneath the needle, we're just trying to get a smooth seam right at the seam line. Now, we're coming back up to where I started stitching. I accidentally left my ba sting stitch on for a couple of inches. So I'm gonna stitch over that again.

All right. Clip my threads. Now, my hat is attached to my brim and it looks nice and smooth. Actually, I didn't get any folds. The interfacing really helps that brim stay nice and flat as you're stitching it.

So the last piece is going to be attaching the lining to the inside. So let's flip this and we're going to tuck our lining in and we want to match the seam of the lining to the seam of the brim. And I'm going to pin this here. I like to hand stitch this in. That seems to me to be the best way to get this um in here.

Nice and smooth. Uh You can certainly try to stitch in the ditch from the right side. When you align the fold of your lining over your previous seam line, you can then stitch in the ditch from the right side and hope to catch that fold on the wrong side. It can be a little tricky, which is why I like to just hand stitch. There's not too much to it.

So I'm just gonna pin that fold of the lining over my previous seam line. I'm just gonna do it for half. You get the idea. You can do the rest of your team all the way around. And I'm gonna grab some thread for my needle and I'll show you how I stitch this in so that it is secure and yet invisible.

So I'm gonna take my thread and hide my knot underneath my seam allowance. And then we're going to take a little bite on the brim just on this one layer of the brim. So we're not going all the way through all of our layers of interfacing. And then I'm taking a bite through the fold of my lining. So it's kind of like the slip stitch and if it winds up being more like a whip stitch, that's ok to, it's just on the inside of your hat.

This hat will be totally washable as well, which is great for when you're wearing it in the summer and it gets dirty and sweaty. It's just cotton fabric and some interfacing. So you can throw it in the wash. So you're going to do that stitch all the way around. And then when it's finished, you'll have your lining totally stitched in and you'll have your hat fully lined and ready to protect your eyes and your skin from the sun.

So, thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoy your hat.