How to Make Wide-Brimmed Hats With Fabric

Design your own wide-brimmed hat to protect your delicate skin from the harsh summer sun. Wide-brimmed hats are great for wearing in the garden, on the beach or while sailing on a boat. When made of fabric the hats can be folded and stored in your purse to take with you. Hats can be made from a floppy and whimsical cotton or using thicker, stronger fabrics such as wool or felt. The possibilities are endless for creating the hat of your dreams.

Draw your hat pieces onto the fabric and interfacing using washable fabric markers. You will need the circle for the top of your hat, the crown and the upper and lower sides of the brim. Label each piece using the marker. You will need only one piece of interfacing for the brim, not one piece for each side of the brim.

Cut out the pieces of your hat.

Iron the interfacing pieces to the wrong side of the fabric for the hat pieces. The wrong side of the fabric is the side you do not want showing on your finished project, or the inside of the hat.

Sew the crown, which is the section of the height that rises from your head to make the hat tall, into a circle. This is accomplished by first folding the fabric in half with the right sides together and the interfacing on the outside.

Iron the seam open so that it will lie flat inside of the finished hat.

Sew the circular top to the crown, with the right side of the circle facing inside. You will be able to see the interfacing on the outside of both pieces while you are working. Clip the curves of the crown as needed while sewing the top in place to alleviate stress on the fabric and seam. Turn the hat right side out.

Sew each piece of the brim together to form it into a circle. Iron the seams open so they will lie flat inside of the finished brim.

Sew the two pieces of the brim together, right sides of the cloth facing, along the outside edge. Line up the seams you sewed so that they match, and begin sewing at the seam to prevent shifting of the fabrics. The outside edge is the end of the brim, or the longest edge of the curved piece of fabric.

Turn the pieces so that the right side of the fabric shows on both sides of the brim.

Pin the inside edge of the brim to the bottom edge of the crown. Line up the seam on the brim with the seam you sewed on the crown in Step 4.

Sew the hat to the brim, backstitching at the beginning and end of the seam.