Today, we’re diving into a one-day sewing challenge featuring our most popular free sewing pattern, The Bucket Hat, where we’ll be creating three distinct bucket hat designs before sending them off to battle it out on the runway.
And who better to give this challenge to other than Project Runway alumni Helen Castillo?
Are you ready for your bucket hat sewing challenge? Yes? Then, let’s unveil the mystery materials! But first… a recap on Helen’s comical reaction to unboxing the challenge.
“Let’s see what goodies we have today. Super cute. Also adorable. My favorite color. Fun lining.”
But time’s ticking designers, let’s tackle this challenge!
Helen has a finite amount of time to plan how she will use the materials. When we asked her what is her favorite way to plan a sewing project in a short amount of time, she exclaimed, “well, the Mood Sewing Planner, of course!”
“Using this sewing planner is an excellent way to keep your sewing projects organized. The croquis and templates are a great canvas for translating your designs to the real world.”
Illustrate your designs with our Colors For Fashion Marker Collection!
Get to Work, Designers, It’s Time to Start Sewing The Bucket Hats!
For this first bucket hat, there are only three pattern pieces: the top, the base, and the brim, each with its own theme. With the brim and support piece both having a consistent theme, there’s room for creativity.
The idea of incorporating animal print for the brim and a vibrant pop of color for the base, topped with a vinyl overlay featuring a playful heart cheetah print, seems particularly exciting.
Pro Tips for Sewing with Vinyl
When sewing vinyl, you cannot use pins because they’ll leave holes in the fabric. So instead, opt for wonder clips! Although they are a bit more bulky, they will keep your fabric safe, especially when you’re at the sewing machine, and they’re a little bit easier to avoid sewing over, too.
For the bucket hat, make sure to align your notches perfectly, and don’t forget those wonder clips—they’ll be your best friend for temporarily securing the pattern pieces around the edges. When joining an overlay and a lining fabric, use a running stitch to securely fasten them together before moving on to assemble all the pieces.
The idea of incorporating animal print for the brim and a vibrant pop color for the base, topped with a vinyl overlay featuring a playful heart cheetah print, seems particularly exciting.
Now that the running stitch has been applied to secure the vinyl to the stabilizing fabric, it’s time to bring the brim pieces together with right sides facing.
Seam allowances of half an inch are maintained on either side of the top pieces.
Once all pieces are joined, the outer layer of the bucket hat is complete. With the base pieces sewn together and seams lightly pressed open, the top of the hat is formed, distinguished by four notches on the top edge and the base. So with the base of our hat inside out we’re going to align our notches.
Aligning notches and seam edges, along with identifying the center points between notches, ensures accurate assembly. Folding the fabric sections in half between notches aids in pinpointing the center point for precise alignment.
So we’re going to attach these the same way as we did with our side panel and top. We’re going to flip everything to the wrong side and align our notches. And, we’re going to keep our seam as a notch to align this side to this side. And then clip the full perimeter of our hat.
Once the top and base are aligned, the brim is attached in the same manner, with everything flipped to the wrong side and notches aligned before clipping the full perimeter.
Cut, snip and clip like a pro with our Mood Brand Signature Scissors & Tools!
These steps are repeated for the lining, resulting in two sets of sewn hat pieces ready to be joined, right sides facing.
Utilize wonder clips around the brim perimeter to ensure seam alignment before sewing, and be sure to leave a three-inch opening for flipping the hat right side out.
When attaching your lining to your self, make sure that you leave a three inch opening. So that way we can flip this to the right side.
Pro Tip
When you are sewing, you should always start where the seam join is being created at your seam allowance. That way you can hide your back tacking and it doesn’t create bulk or any unevenness within other areas of your garment.
Now that we have our brim wonder clips around the full perimeter of the base. We’re going to use the arm of the machine to our advantage, so that we can place this just as you would with sewing a sleeve, and we can just continuously rotate it.
Before we flip our cap to the right side out, we’re going to trim down our seam allowance. Typically, when you sew anything that’s on a curve, you have to clip towards the seam allowance to release that. But in this case we’re just going to trim it down to about a quarter inch. And then we’ll flip the entire thing right side out
Once you’ve pulled your bucket hat right side out, we’re going to tuck our facing into our self. Then we’ll return to the sewing machine by tucking in our seam allowance and doing a top stitch to secure this edge.
So now I’ll be doing the topstitching along the outer perimeter of the brim of the hat, and I’m changing my stitch width so that I can align my needle closer to the edge. So because I’m not using this stitch as a decorative feature and more of a functional feature, I want my top stitching to be as close as possible to the edge of my brim.
Pro Tip
Considering that we had trimmed down our seam allowance, it’s better that I do my top stitching a little bit more shallow so that my quarter inch doesn’t pull out from the right side.
We’ve completed the first of our three bucket hats for today’s challenge. We’ve got our vinyl on the right side, and we’ve got it fully lined and clean, finished with top stitching around the brim. So now we’re going to jump into our second set of fabrics, and we’re going to try for another design.
A Sneak Peek at Sewing Bucket Hat #2
Here we have it. Our second bucket hat of the challenge. We’ve got our re embroidered tulle as our self layer. And we’ve got our lining layer as well. I love the fact that this has a little bit extra pop with these glitter bits, and it’s going to add a lot of dimension to our bucket hat when it’s complete.
For this design, I opted for using the fusible for the brim of my hat to give it a little bit more stability. Now we’re going to run to the iron. And we’re going to fuse our moire layers of our brim of our hat.
How to Use a Double Sided Fusible
Press down with an iron for 5 to 10 seconds in each section and be sure that you’ve got the wrong sides facing of your fabric and your interfacing.
After fusing, sew a classic frame stitch using the longest stitch length on your machine to join both of these layers before bringing our brim pieces together to finish the hat.
Now that we’ve done our frame stitching for all five of our panels of our bucket hat, we’re going to bring our side panel together. We’re going to bring that with a half inch seam allowance to join. Same for our brims. And then we will attach all three of our pieces. Repeat all of the previous steps to create the lining for your bucket hat.
So, again, we’re going to take these right sides together, making sure that we line up our seam at the notches, place some pins and then we’ll sew the full circumference of the brim, leaving a three inch opening so we can turn the hat right side out.
What do y’all think of design number two? I think it’s giving couture high end Paris fashion week.
Time’s up Designers!
We hope your bucket hats are ready! If not, let’s make it work, and head off to the runway. Who do you think will be today’s guest judge?
Oh! Time’s up. So it’s it’s off to the runway.
Purchase Materials Used in The Bucket Hat Sewing Challenge:
- MDF262 – The Bucket Hat Sewing Pattern (free download below!)
#1 Vinyl Animal Print:
- 1 yard Black and Rainbow Animal Spot Hearts Lightweight Translucent Vinyl
- 1 yard Mood Exclusive Neon Pink Recycled Polyester Swim Trunk Fabric
#2 Black 3D Roses:
- 1 yard Black 3D Fabric Roses Glitter Tulle
- 1 yard Florence Jet Black Polyester Moire Bengaline
- 1 yard Black Ants Jacquard Lining
#3 Platina Luxury Tulle:
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And the winner is...
Which of these unique looks is your favorite? You be the judge.
Cast your vote in the comments below!
Interested in joining the fun? Click the links above to shop the unconventional materials that were used for Helen’s Bucket Hat Challenge. Or, consider using surprise materials by exploring Mood’s Mystery Boxes for a surprise design challenge. Let the sewing begin!
Definitely #3!
What is the seam allowance for the bucket hat?
1/2″ seam allowance for all Mood patterns unless specified otherwise
I like #2, the black with 3d roses <3
Hola. Para todo patrón deber ser 1/2 centímetro de costura.
#1
Love the beautiful black hat. Your directions were very clear and helpful. Thanks Mood!!
Love Helen and her designs. My favorites are #1 and #2.
Number 2 but all of them are super cute
Love them all but #3 is my fav!
#2
I love Design #1. Thank you so much for sharing this!
I love them all , but the black one is my favorite it’s really hard for me to choose !
Door print the pattern or draft it from dimensions?
Hello, you can download and print our free Bucket Hat sewing pattern.
Peace love I love the bucket hats that you have and designs but most of all I love the one is that a flowery pink or whatever it is I love it Thanks for sharing the pattern
We are glad to hear 🙂 Happy sewing!
I pick texture so #2 is best.
Although I am not one for pink. I love #1 the Vinyl Animal print. With the #2 hat of Black 3D Roses as my next favorite. I like to see and can’t wait to make my own hat. Thank you for this free pattern.