I got Betz White's cadet hat pattern on a whim while buying another pattern from her shop. I thought it would be a step up from my usual baseball hat when I want a brim. I took her up on the "make do" idea and used fabric from old jeans for the outside
and an old men's shirt for the lining.
One issue I had was, no doubt, due to my crappy sewing skills. The directions said to sew around the top seam. As you can see below that was a disaster for me. After removing that stitching, I sewed about a quarter inch down on the crown instead.
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Bad top stitching
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| Better side stitching on the crown |
I'm pretty happy with the final results overall, but wish I had used a mid-weight interfacing on the crown and top to make it hold its shape better . The pattern didn't call for interfacing except for heavy Pellon in the brim and some interfacing on the band as long as you used a heavier fabric. I thought the band would have been solid enough without interfacing and the rest could have used interfacing to hold the shape better. On the other hand, maybe if I had been able to do that top stitching better, it would have held the shape better.
I'm going to give this one more try using some old khaki's and the interfacing. At $12.95 for the pattern, I've got to get more than one hat from this!
