Baby Beanie Hat Tutorial

A friend of ours gave birth a few weeks prematurely recently to a beautiful 4lb 9oz baby girl. I have a feeling her surprise early arrival (she is doing well though) will mean that she won't be able to fit many of the baby clothes her parents have prepared for her and so decided to make her a little hat for starters and perhaps this will be joined tomorrow by a matching baby outfit... depends on how my little munchkin is tomorrow :)

Supplies:
scissors, thread, sewing machine
approx 40cm x 30cm of stretch cotton knit fabric - eg t-shirt fabric

I considered doing a refashion of an old t-shirt for this as I am currently on a re-fashion high but I didn't have anything girly or pink enough (go figure!).

To create a template either model it off a baby hat you already have or use a saucer to trace a semi circle and then add about 4 inches of straight fabric at the bottom as you will be turning it under. Place it on your fabric making sure that the fabric is able to be stretched sideways rather than up and down. This is important - it will help your hat stretch to fit bub's head. When your template is placed as it is in the picture your fabric with stretch left to right. Cut out 2.

Now you have your two pieces....

Place them right sides together lining up all edges.

Sew around the edge with a 1/4' seam leaving the bottom straight edge open.

At this point if you like you could overlock your seam. I don't really deem this necessary on this project as you are working with knit fabric and it won't fray. Fold up the open edge to the mark as indicated in the pattern.

Sew around where you folded your straight edge up to. This will keep it in place. NOTE: This is not the bottom of your hat but rather about half way up where your previous edge now has been folded up to.

Turn inside out. You can see where my stitching from the previous step is part way up the hat.

Fold you bottom edge up to the sewn line making sure to fold towards the outside of the hat.

Almost done! Iron your little fold rim to make sure it sits flat and perfect.

With a needle and thread stitch a few stitches over top of each other at each side to hold the rim in place. I managed to make my stitches so small I needed an arrow to show you where they are (that and the fact that my camera seemed to be having trouble focusing!)

And you are done! Since I don't have a newborn model at the moment (here's hoping the stalk will bring one soon!) James' teddy has offered to do the job - although he wasn't too happy about wearing pink....

I plan to embellish my little hat with a fabric flower (stay tuned for the tutorial!). You could also do a nice button (making sure its sewn on nice and tight so little hands don't pull it off) or sew some ric-rac around it... the possibilities are all there for you to imagine!

Enjoy!