Make a Newsie Hat

I edit a newspaper (Frankly Speaking), and I was discussing with a fellow editor how we might make Frankly Speaking-type swag to -er- inspire people to join us.

So I looked at pictures of newspaper-related things and saw newsie hats online. And then I reverse-engineered them to come up with this newsie hat approximation. It's pretty cool!

Use something bigger than your head, like a big mixing bowl. Cut out one circle.

Measure around your head.
Measure around your fabric circle.

Calculate (fabric - head) / 6 = the base of the triangle you will cut.
Calculate head / 6 = the spacing between triangle bases.

Mark around the perimeter of the circle. Put little exes on the bits that are going to be cut out.

Get a smaller circle (still bigger than your head) and trace it in the center of the fabric dot. Draw triangles that take up the x'd bases and have points on the inner circle.

Cut them out.

Sew up the triangle edges. This will form your hat shape.

Don't turn the hat right-side-out yet!

Get a straightedge and trace across the top of the hat, opposite corner to opposite corner. They should all cross in the same place in the middle.

Sew offset from both sides of these lines to make decorative seam-like stitching.

Turn hat right side out. Turn raw edge under and sew.

Cut two crescents out of fabric. But wait! If you want to embroider them, do it first. I did, and these crescents are not the ones I used. But they work too.

Sew the crescents together at the outer edge. Also cut out a crescent of cardboard and put it in there.

Iron the raw edges inside and sew the cloth over to completely encapsulate the cardboard.

Put the brim on an edge of the hat and sew those together.

Look how pretty that is! I will also make one out of newspaper when I get some newspaper.

Oh! And if you add a cloth-covered button to the top of this hat, that looks very authentic too.