Orange...Bucketfull of Sunshine

I think I have a new crush...

On the color orange.

I LOVED coming up with this project from start to finish.

I even painted my nails to match my hat! I saw some orange 97cent nail polish at Walmart and just couldn't resist.

I also got the bottled Crush there too for only $2.76 or something like that for a  six pack...okay now it just sounds like I'm adverstising for Walmart. Moving on...

I took inspiration from Kalleen's At Second Street T-shirt Hat.

And instead made a floppy bucket hat which I like to call my:

From the beginning I wanted to have striped orange fabric. I found it in too small T-shirts for a hefty price and nothing even remotely close by the bolt.

So I took things into my own hands and painted the stripes on myself.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's start from the beginning.

1. Take a thrifted/old T-shirt. I was making this for me so I had to use a larger men's shirt.

2. Cut off the bottom of the shirt and then cut 2 strips about 4.5 inches wide and 1-2 inches shorter than the circumference of your head. My head is 23 inches around. So that I would get a snug fit I cut my pieces to be 4.5 by 21 inches.

How many inches you reduce it by should be determined by how stretchy your fabric is.

3. Bust out your calculator, and plug your measurements into this equation:

reduced circumference / pi = diameter of top of hat

Now add 6 inches to that diameter...

...And, hunt through your kitchen cabinets for a lid, bowl, or plate that most closely matches the larger diameter measurement. While your at it, also hunt for a bowl that matches the diameter for the top of the hat and set it aside for later.

Cut 2 large circles with the large bowl.  

4. Take 1 large circle and 1 strip and paint your lines on.

If you don't want to do this, skip to #5.

Painting the lines is quite simple.

Cut strips of freezer paper with your paper cutter. My paper was really wide so I just folded my paper down to fit. Worked great.

I ended up making the stripes smaller more like this:

Line them up on your fabric how you want them and iron them on.

Paint in the lines.

My favorite part of freezer paper painting, is peeling the paper way. It's like magic!

Once it's dry you are ready to start assembling the hat.

5. Pin and sew the strips together

{right sides facing} into a loop. You are supposed to sew the  striped piece with an 1/8 inch seam allowance. The plain piece - a 1/4 inch seam allowance. {I forgot and sewed both with a 1/4 seam allowance, and it worked out anyway...but it's a good idea to do it. :) }

Note: For added stretch and durability I use a narrow zig zag stitch.

6. Cut your circle pieces.

Stack your large circles together and retrieve that smaller bowl you hunted down earlier.
Find the center of your circle.

Then using your smaller bowl, trace and cut like so.

7.  Assemble the hat tops.

 Seperate the smaller circles {but keep the larger O pieces together} and pin your looped strips to the hat tops/smaller circles. {right sides facing}

Sew all the way around with a narrow zig-zag stitch. Leave an 1/8 inch seam allowance for the striped pieces and 1/4 inches for the plain pieces. {I did remember to do that for this step and it's more important to get it right for this step - phew!}

8. Bring the hat together.

Turn the striped hat top right side out. Stack the liner hat top inside with seams lining up.

Pin the brim or large O pieces {should be stacked together}to the hat tops. Like so...

Narrow zig-zag stitch all the way around leaving a 1/4 inch seam allowance.

9. Add finishing touches.

Folding the seam over and down toward the brim, sew a straight all the way around parallell to the other sewn line.

This step makes it cleaner and prettier inside...

...and out.

The brim may shift a bit during sewing...just give it a quick trim.

Now...Sew around the brim twice in two parallel lines. I just used a straight stitch for this part. 

To make keeping the lines straight easier, I top stitched with this setting {see picture below} very close to the edge of the brim.

This widened my stitch and made it so the needle is all the way to the right of the sewing foot.

Then and I switched it back to the standard setting so the needle would move all the way to the left, and sewed around one more time.

And that's it.

Pretty easy and fun.

I made another one in reverse colored stripes.

I painted it with acrylic paint though...because let's face it. I'm cheap! :) And it stains my clothes, so I figured why not "stain" with purpose? That was before I found out that you can add a textile medium to any acrylic paint to make it fabric paint! See Crafts & Sutch's post about it here.
That's going to expand my fabric paint color choices by like 30.

Anyway...With straight acrylic paint, after it dries, wet it and then heat set it in the dryer to prevent bleeding.

It may continue to peel a bit, and it cracked a lot...giving my hat um...a distressed look.  ;)  Meh...Why not?

I love this hat because the floppy brim makes it a bit girly - almost ruffle like. It's also comfy and perfect for blocking out the sun. Hopefully it will keep my freckles in check. :)

Have sun shiney day!

And be sure to stop by Kojodesigns for more another lovely orange project from none other than Katy from No Big Dill!