get your craft on #5: easy peasy baby beanie

Now say that five times with a mouthful of Doritos! Or is that just me? Anyway...I'm back with the latest installment of Get Your Craft On, I know I missed one in June but am hoping to do two in July? At the rate time is flying by I think I might have to do three in August! I know, crazy.

With the babies currently sprouting up in my life (latest edition Pepe and my sister is pregnant at the moment) I thought I'd do a quick tutorial on how to make a little new baby gift. I make these all. the. time. Like literally always have a few floating about on my sewing table. I started making them as 'sales boosters' for when I did markets with Little Miss Emma. Basically my big ticket items were canvas's and minky blankets, but a lot of the time I needed smaller and more affordable items for mums on the run to buy without thinking too hard about the family budget. Plus they cost me next to nothing to make in materials and labour. Winner.

To start you will need the following...

- a baby beanie 

- baking paper to make pattern

- pencil to trace pattern

- scissors (fabric scissors and paper scissors - don't use your nice sewing scissors to cut baking paper!)

- a stretchy-knit fabric like jersey

- pins

- co-ordinating thread in your trusty sewing machine

Originally I got this pattern out of a library book, now unless you are near the Murrindindi Shire Library in Yea (anyone?) I suggest you pick yourself up a little beanie to use as a template. I bought this spotty one in a discount store for $2 to use as an example. Then you can make the pattern and have it forever and make thousands more beanies, all from starting with your $2 one :)

Get some of your baking paper and with your pencil use your beanie as a template to trace around it - add about 3-4cm for seam allowances and about 10cm to the bottom, you'll find out later why. For the top of the beanie I like to do a pixie hat which I will later knot. I think they look super cute and add a bit of a difference to an otherwise plain beanie. As you can see I just freehand drew mine, trying to make it as symmetrical as possibly and rounding the top off. If you like you can precisely measure yours but I'm a freehand kind of sewer/pattern maker! You can always trim down your pattern piece later. 

Cut out the shape, you should end up with a pattern piece like this:

Now using the baking paper pattern you just made pin it to a folded piece of your stretch fabric (so that you get two pieces when cut out). I used a bright pink and watermelon striped jersey but have seen lots of great gender neutral knits in greys, whites and reds around lately perfect for a baby shower gift. 

Once you've pinned your pattern to your folded fabric, cut it out and you should have two beanie pieces (front and back)...

Now you can pin them together all the way around, except for the bottom which will be left open. Off you go. Pin, pin, pin.

Next step is to sew it all together. Start at one end and go up over the long pixie-hat and down the other side. If you're not used to sewing a stretch fabric go slooowly, it can be super frustrating the way the fabric rolls and won't sit flat like a nice simple quilting cotton. I am no stretch fabric sewing expert like my mum (she has a certificate to say she is a 'Knit-Wit'. Yeah. All over that.) 

Once you have trimmed some excess fabric away you might have something resembling this...

Go ahead and turn the hat inside out (or right side out...confused?), iron it all out nice and flat and tie a knot in the long pixie-hat. You'll see now that the cornering at the top point of the hat doesn't matter too much as it is hidden in the knot. No need for perfect sewing? My kind of sewing.

But what about the bottom I hear you ask? Well, like I said earlier when you made the pattern piece, if you left a bit extra then you should be able to fold the bottom up, and then again you should see some nice neat stitching like so...

...and still have a big enough beanie for a newborn. Simply hand stitch two stitches on each side of the hat to secure the fold-up bottom, or if you are an embroidery wizz you could even do some French knots along the fold, and voila! The perfect new baby gift or something to quickly whip up for a baby shower. Once you get going on these beanies I swear they will take you ten minutes tops, and be quite addictive to get rid of some scrap fabric lying about.

Happy sewing!

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella