Where's Waldo - why there he is!

On my last trip to my favourite fabric shop I had to take both kids with me, not my favourite way to shop. In order to make it bearable I promised the kids a piece of fabric each to be made up as they wished.  J's choice was a very cute find - a Where's Waldo fabric (except he's all over it so he's pretty easy to find).  Due to the amount left on the bolt I had to buy either 0.75 yard or 2.75 yards.  Since it was a pretty flimsy, white background cotton I figured it probably wasn't the best fabric choice for kids clothes so I just got the 0.75yards, then I had to figure out what to make from it.  J and I finally decided on a baseball cap.

I had never made one before, though I've made many sun hats but I figured how hard can it be.  I took J's favourite baseball cap and created a pattern by tracing around the pieces.  It was really just 6 triangular pieces for the crown and the rounded off rectangle for the brim.  I cut doubles of everything so it could be fully lined (that way I didn't need to figure out any finishing techniques - shhhhh, don't tell anyone but I'm a bit lazy that way).

Something went a bit wrong on the initial run, I must have added a 3/4" seam allowance to my pattern and then only sewed 1/4" or something but the crown turned out way to big.  I had to resew it twice to get it down to a reasonable size.  I was originally just going to make the hat a single size hat, but since I had all this extra width I decided to add a piece of elastic to the seam allowance of the back two triangular panels to allow for some head growth - Hopefully it'll last a bit longer this way.

To stiffen the brim I ended up using a yogurt container out of our recycling.  After cutting off the bottom of the container and the rim around the top, I was able to flatten it out and cut it to the required size and shape and when it was let go it sprang back just enough to create a perfect curve to the brim.  I was pretty proud of that piece of ingenuity!

J found a spool of spotted ribbon at the fabric store as well that he insisted had to go with the Waldo fabric, he wanted it all around the hat but I managed to talk him into just having a cross of fabric across the brim of the hat.  I was quite impressed that my sewing machine was able to easily sew through the yogurt container.

The finishing touch was a snap added to the very top of the crown to cover the join where all the pieces come together.