Dinner Plate Hat from Sweater: How To

Seriously folks, this blog post is going to take longer to create than the hat, thanks to all the pictures I have to upload...

My victim: A size medium thrift store sweater in a ramie cotton blend:



Tools: The plate,

the scissors, a marker... and a measuring tape.


I place the plate on the upper back of the sweater, just barely avoiding where the tag is sewn in. Draw a circle around it. Cut it out. (I did all my marking and then all the cutting.)

Then, measure five inches from the bottom ribbing of the sweater, and cut off that strip. This will become your brim.




Handle the cut knit gently and it won't ravel out.



Take the brim piece and cut it into a long strip (it starts out as a loop) by making a cut in the center of the back or front of the sweater, so that if there are any seams in the strip they will be evenly spaced and towards the back.



Now take that strip, and fold it in half, and trim it so that the width will measure three inches at the ends, and five in the middle. When you spread it out, it will be like a gently sloping bell curve. You do this because you need more fabric in the front than you do in the back, since the hat sits back on your head.



Starting at the top of the circle (notice the ribbing pattern) and the middle of the strip, pin them together, right sides facing each other.


When you come to the back, make sure the ends are even. Now you sew a little seam in the back of the brim, and trim the excess, then zig zag your seam allowance.


Sew around your circle, straight stitch, close to the edge. Then go over the edges with a zig zag. It will never ravel now. If you are lucky enough to won a serger, just use that.






There's your hat. Obviously, it is huge.
Now comes the fun part!

Play around with pleats, ruffles, tucks and folds. Get creative and see what you like. You can give this thing many types of looks, from shower cap to snood to clown hat to something actually wearable, I hope.






I chose three pleats on one side, and a pleat in the back to take in the fullness, folding the brim back and adding a rose.

To make the rose I cut an extra strip of knit off the sweater--about six inches. I zig zagged around the edges to make them ruffly, then folded the strip on half and rolled it together, sewing and scrunching as I went along. This I sewed by hand, and then sewed it onto the three side pleats. I added some beads in the center of the rose as well.



And from behind: