Sometimes it takes a little while for a project to make it to the ol’ blog, and this is one of those projects. I tried out the Ullvi Slouchy Hat Sewing Pattern from The Last Stitch in January.
If you have read this blog for a long time, you might notice that every winter for the past few years, I make a couple of projects with Polartec fleece. Because of that, I have a lot of scraps and odd pieces left over. I’m not great at using scraps, but I try when I can. This year, I decided to take any of my Power Stretch and Curly Fleece odds and ends that were big enough and make hats out of them.
I bought a bundle of patterns a few years ago from The Last Stitch that included the Tova Mittens, Brisa Beanie, and Ullvi Slouchy Hat and haven’t tried them all yet. After looking at both hat patterns, I went with the Ullvi for this project, even though the fleece I wanted to use wasn’t exactly right. This pattern is designed to have double layers, however my fabrics all had distinct right and wrong sides that wouldn’t quite work with the way the hat is meant to be constructed. There are some great suggestions in the instructions for adapting the pattern, however, and those got me thinking. I knew I could make it work.
The best plan seemed to be to cut my hats in a single layer and either cover the bottom edge with foldover elastic or extend the bottom edge by 1/2 inch for a hem allowance. I decided on the hem allowance. The pattern calls for a 5mm or 1/5 inch seam allowance, but I chose to use a 1/4 inch seam allowance, since that’s standard with the tools that I use. It’s a slightly larger seam allowance, but with stretchy fabrics, it’s not a big deal.
For such a relatively simple garment, the designer put a lot of thought into this hat. She provides two different methods of assembly. The first gives you a hat where the seam allowance is visible inside, and the second gives you a hat with no visible seam allowances inside. For my single-layer hats, the first method seemed best. After initially using only my sewing machine and getting wavy seam allowances, I decided I would serge the top and side seams of the hats and use my sewing machine to hem them with a zigzag stitch.
In fact, I hemmed each hat before doing any of the other seams. For this, I used a walking foot, standard presser foot pressure, a 75/11 stretch needle, polyester thread in my needle, and bulky/wooly nylon in my bobbin. My stitch height was 6 and my stitch length was 1.5. I tested all this on scraps before committing to it. Using a zigzag and wooly nylon in my bobbin are just personal preferences–you could also use a twin needle and polyester thread in the bobbin instead.
Because I am still new to using my serger, I had to adjust the settings of the differential feed a few times before I could get smooth, rather than wavy, edges. I ended up setting it at 1.5. This was a great project to practice my serger skills on. Every little bit helps!
The only step of the instructions where I had questions was step 5. I couldn’t tell if the side seam was supposed to be on the side or in the back middle during this step, as the illustration wasn’t clear on that. The notches were also not labeled at this step, so after looking things over, I labeled them for myself. The “A” notches are at the top, the “B” notches are on the side, and the “C” notch/mark is in the middle. All of this means, I think, that the side seam is not pictured because it should be lying at the back in the middle. I know this is really getting into the minute details, but if you have questions at this point, hopefully you can benefit from my experience. Other than that, I didn’t have any problems, and I found the instructions very clear.
While I didn’t try every assembly option, I did try out all the sizes. I made a small for a family member and used up the rest of my scraps trying out the different sizes for a few other people.
Everything turned out really well, but I definitely liked the finished product in the Power Stretch best (the gray, ivory, and pink hats) and the Curly Fleece least (the yellow and green), although all of them are wearable.
The Power Stretch has much better recovery, so it works better overall. So far, that is my favorite Polartec fleece substrate. I just love it for leggings, sweatshirts, and now hats.
I found this pattern really interesting and would definitely try it again. I hope to try out the Brisa Beanie at some point as well. You can see my first attempt at the Tova mittens here. Hopefully I can give those another try in the future, too. All of these patterns are great for stash busting.
Now I had better go and take pictures of some of my other finished projects so I can share them with you! Have a great weekend!
Pattern and Branch 