Friday, May 02, 2008

Court Jester: The Hat

The pièce de résistance! (maybe not, the pants ARE really cool, but this really makes it say 'jester'). I used Butterick 4313 for the jester hats. This pattern went together really nicely, and was quicker than I thought it would be. I think the pattern runs a bit small, however, so if you make it, check the fit right after you sew the main pieces together.

Looks cool, no? I underlined the pieces with canvas instead of using the fusible interfacing called for. The horns are stuffed with fiberfill. If I hadn't been on such a time constraint, I would've spent more time making sure I didn't have any of the same colors next to each other.

I lined both hats in blue, since I had a good amount of it leftover. To make this hat, you sew the main horn pieces together, then stuff the horn. Next you are to put in the lining, but I did that last.

You then make the two little horns separately, stuff them, and hand sew them to the hat. That was hard, and I can't imagine doing it with the lining in already. Next time I would hand sew the little horns on before stuffing the big horn. The horns were also hard to turn right side out, and I rounded the corners.

I finished the bottom with a french binding (like a quilt). The binding was sewn onto the inside of the hat, and flipped to the outside and edgestitched down. Quick, easy, and looks pretty good.

Each horn got 3 bells each, and it does fit nicely. For as big as the hat is, it really stays nice and secure on the head. I hope to get some good pictures at the feast this afternoon (my batteries died during our photo shoot this morning. o_O ).

1 comment:

Meg said...

Hi and thanks for stopping by my blog today. Love the jester costume! I'm also the mother of a 12-year-old boy, though he's soon to turn 13. And of course we're going to see "Iron Man" tonight!