Santa Hat & Cape

 
  Don't you just love to watch the ice skating events at the Winter Olympics? I do. 

   
With all the Christmas decorations out in December I got the bright idea to make an outfit from the furry Santa hats that were on display for my granddaughter's 18' doll . So, I bought a couple of hats and gathered the rest of my supplies.

You'll need a tape measure, seam ripper, pins, and a pattern + the hats, of course, along with the doll.

      This part is tricky because the tape measure is slippery. Wrap it around her head about where you think the hat should be. Looks like approximately 12 1/2". I cut the hat a little bigger.

       

     In this picture the tape measure is horizontal, but you need to slide the tape measure across the hat till you till you reach 7" across. (I didn't think to take a picture of that. ) You then measure down the hat to about 8 1/4". I marked it with pins and cut it off. 

(I don't know why I couldn't get the underline off. It doesn't mean anything special. I highlighted it and hit the underline button again, but it wouldn't go away. And while I'm on my soapbox, why won't the text wrap around the picture or go on the side like the first two pictures? I don't have a clue. I can do that in Microsoft Word, but I haven't figured it out here.  Oh, well. Continue with the tutorial.)

You now have two pieces. One for the hat and one for the cape. As you can see, the white fur is, in my opinion, way too big and there isn't any fur on the bottom of the hat. You'll need to cut the fur in half on the cape part.        

In order to do that, turn the hat inside out and look for the white stitches where the fur is attached to the hat. Pick them out with a seam ripper. Try not to cut a hole in the hat.

OOPS!

Not to worry. This fabric is very forgiving. Just stitch up the hole in a thin line, don't zig zag it or anything. Turn it right side out and fluff up the fur. It isn't even noticeable. Whew!

Now, cut the white fur trim in half (1 1/2"). Turn it up to the right side and pin it with the raw edge sticking up. After you have pinned it all the way around, start tucking it under and repin it.

Sew it on the right side of the material along the edge of the fur and the underneath hem will look like this (Not the seam on the right hand side of the picture, the hem has a little of the fur showing on the bottom.)









To finish the cape, using your seam ripper, take out 2 1/2" - 3" of the seam. Fold the seam back and top stitch around the seam, going back and forth a couple of times on the bottom of the opening to keep it from continuing to rip open. Turn under the neck about 3/4" and sew it down with a 1/2" seam to make a casing. Run a length of 1/8" ribbon through the casing and pull it as tight as you'dd like to close the cape.
   





Almost through. Take the piece of fur you cut off the cape and sew it on the bottom of the hat. Put it on her, add some small Christmas stockings for boots, and she is read to brave the cold weather. I got the idea here for the boots. I didn't add the soles to the boots though. Unfortunately, I didn't get my red ones on sale, but after Christmas, I got some blue ones and green ones.

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/41/8f/71/418f71b005b01b4d5bd0cb0c184d870e.jpg

I got a little ahead of  myself on this picture. It shows the cut outs of both the hat & cape as well as the top & skirt. The top & skirt will be another tutorial.