Homemade Clothing: A Recycled Sweater Hat Pattern

Enlarge Image Image Gallery In “Handmade Home,” Amanda Blake Soule offers simple sewing and craft projects for the home that reflect the needs, activities and personalities of today’s families. Filled with thirty-three projects made by reusing and repurposing materials, all of the items here offer a practical use in the home. Photo Courtesy Roost Books

Winter hats can be playful and personalized when you make them yourself. You can add unique homemade clothing to your family’s closets, starting with this simple recycled sweater hat from Handmade Home (Roost Books, 2009). This excerpt is from the chapter “Family Sweater Hats.” 

The sweater hat is one of my favorite quick and cozy sewing projects because it’s made entirely from repurposed materials and solely for the purpose of keeping someone cozy and warm. Creating a sweater hat is one of my favorite ways to extend the life of a sweater and to keep my little ones warm during the cooler months of fall and winter. Completed with just a few seams, these comfy hats are the perfect project for days when you only have a few moments to create and want immediate results.

Pattern Details

• Beginner
• A half-day project
• Finished size: Infant/toddler (child’s medium, child’s large/women’s, men’s)

Use What You Have

This project calls for the use of an adult-sized sweater, slightly felted. If the sweater is not already felted, you can do so by washing it by itself in hot soapy water. Wash the sweater repeatedly until it has properly shrunk and the knit fibers of the sweater are tight and close together. Felting will only work with sweaters that have a 90 to 100 percent wool content.

Materials

• Fabric 1: (1) adult-sized or large child-sized sweater, made with 90 to 100 percent wool
• Pattern pieces H, I, J, or K depending on size
• Optional: Felt, wool, embroidery floss and needle, or buttons for embellishments