Halloween Costume Hat Tutorial

So....I'm throwing together a hat for a Halloween costume, and it occurred to me that this hat could be made to fit a ton of themes. This cost less than $2.00. I'll show you how I made it.

pirate
Shakespearean/Elizabethan costumes
could fit many fairy tale themes
period soldier
Cyrano de Bergerac
Three Musketeers
Velasquez (the painter)
Spanish officer
colonial costumes

None of the hats I found at the store fit or looked quite right. There were a few on the internet I liked, but they were all over $40, which seemed ridiculous for a Halloween costume. Just so you know, I was going for something vaguely like this, but with a bigger brim:

Halloween Costume Hat Tutorial

Supplies: witch hat with wire brim (I got mine from a dollar store), black fabric (I used an old tshirt), glue gun, scissors

1. Cut off the tip of the witch hat. If you want a taller brim on your hat, cut less off. If you want it to fit closer to your head, cut more off.

2. This is how much I cut off. My hat had an overlay of spiderweb fabric, so I cut that off the tip, too.

3. Now I turned the hat inside out and glued the cut edge together. Then I turned it right side out and tried it on. I stood in front of a mirror and just squished it around until it looked right. Pin it, put clothespins on it, whatever--just hold it into place, then sew or glue it how you want it. I hot glued the fabric into a shape that was sort of rectangular.

4. (This sounds complicated but it's not....trace the outside oval/circle of the hat, giving yourself 2 extra inches, then do the same with the inside oval.) Place the hat on top of your t-shirt and trace about 2 inches outside the brim. Trace the inside where the hat touches your head, too. Leave yourselves 2 inches on the inside of that part. In the photo above, I didn't leave myself enough room on the inside circle, so I had to do it again with another shirt.

5. Glue the t-shirt fabric to the underside of the hat. The whitish lines are my hot glue. Then cut off the excess along the edge of the brim. (Tip...I found it helped to run a line of glue just inside the ribbon of the brim.)

6. Following the same instructions in Step 5, glue the fabric to the top of the hat. Trim off the excess around the outside edge, and around the base of the head.

7. Now embellish the sucker to your little heart's content. Add trim, ribbon, feathers, flowers, spangles...whatever. The wire brim also allows you to bend the hat into any shape you want.

I'm working on our costumes again today. (What we're going as is a secret, so there. However, you're welcome to guess.) Are you all in a Halloween frenzy? If not...why aren't you? It's Halloween thirty, people!

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In my neck of the woods, Halloween has been suspended for the duration of Hurricane Sandy. I hope she clears out of here in time for the kids to trick-or-treat on Wednesday!

Posted by: Maria | October 29, 2012 at 08:08 AM