Mushroom Hat Tutorial

1. Cut a strip of cardboard a little bit longer than the circumference of your head where you want the hat to sit. If it is corrugated cardboard, it will bend much easier in one direction than the other. Cut the strip so it will bend easily around your head. Work the cardboard with your hands first if it is not flexible enough to avoid hard angles. Tape on both sides.

2. Cut two more strips of cardboard to make the top of the hat. The bottom one should sit directly on top of your head so the hat can't slip down. Tape in place.

3. Lay out your cardboard. If you are using two pieces, tape them together. Place your new hat in the center and trace it.

4. Using a pin or your sewing needle, tack a ribbon/ string half the diameter (radius) of your desired brim in the center of your cardboard.

5. Use a pencil on the other end to draw the brim circle. My pencil was sharp, so I just stuck it right through the ribbon.

6. Using your cutting implement of choice, cut out your hat brim. I would suggest a box cutter. If you are a kid or an accident-prone person, I would suggest asking your adult to do this part. Box cutters, if not used properly, are fully capable or sending someone for stitches. PRO TIP: Think about what you are cutting on top of and how much you care about it having slices in it. I used a self-healing mat. You could also cut on top of a few layers of scrap cardboard or a piece of scrap wood. I would not suggest the dining room table or your bed.

7. Make sure your new brim fits over top of your hat. If not, cut it bigger until it does. You don't want it super tight because there will be fabric in that gap but too loose is also bad. It should slide on easily.

8. once your brim is of the desired dimensions, you will cut a second one. If you are using two pieces of cardboard for each one like me, make sure the seams run in different directions for structural integrity. Once you have two identical brims. label which side is the top and bottom, front and back, so that you match up identical sides in the future. If there is a white side, you want at least one of them facing down. If you are using translucent fabric and one side isn't white, now would be a good time to paint it.

9. Figure out the circumference of your hat. My hat ended up having a 21 inch diameter. So
d x 3.1415 = c

21 x 3.1415 = 65.97

Our circumference is about 66inches

Now figure out the length of the bottom fabric you will need to make the gills.

c x 1.5= 99inches

To figure out the width, measure the widest part of the bring from the outside edge to the head hole. This is typically on the side. Add about 3 inches. You can do less, but I like being on the safe side. So my gill fabric needed to be 99"x 9" in reality it ended up being like 106" x9" Longer fabric = more folds. Less fabric= fewer folds. It must be at least as long as your circumference or it won't cover the whole thing. I stitched several pieces together to get it long enough.

10. Run a loose stitch along one of the long ends of the fabric to gather it together. The thread needs to be several inches longer than the circumference of your head. Gently pull the thread to gather the fabric. Try to get the gathers evenly distributed along the thread.

11. take your bottom brim and place it on your work space white side down (whichever side will be facing the floor on your final product) Lay your gathered fabric wrong side up (the side with seams) on top of it and arrange the gathers around the head hole to your satisfaction. Leave a bit of overlap where your fabric starts/ends so you can hide the end. Hot glue it down.

12. Pull the fabric through the hole to the bottom side.

13. carefully pull the fabric over the white side and glue it to the brown side. Work your way around arranging it to your liking and glueing down. When you get to the end, fold it under and glue it over top of the beginning of the fabric. This should make it look like just another fold and hide the connection.

14. Your gills are done. Set aside where your cats can not get it. Go drink a glass of water and eat the meal you forgot about before continuing.

15. Lay your bottom brim gill side down on the table. Stick your hat in the head hole. Put the other brim over top. While gently pressing down on the brims, use tape to secure the hat to only the top brim. Set gilled brim aside.

16. Cut 6 more long strips of cardboard. (some of mine are taped together because I did not have long enough pieces) Secure them over the hat at just short of the height you want your mushroom to be. Mine is siting directly on the hat bit. I hot glued the ends down but I don't see why you couldn't use tape.

This is what I did to the whole length of the cardboard strips before securing them. Working the cardboard made it more flexible and nicely rounded.

17. Cover the structure in something ( I used left over window cover plastic) to keep the batting from going in the holes.

18. Cover the structure in batting. I line it up the glue the top center in place/ I then hold it up on end and secure four points about 1/4 of the way apart and then work in between them. This helps to keep the fabric from being too bunched all on one side. ( You can see me doing this with the fabric on step 19.)

19. Cover the structure with fabric and glue down all along the underside.

Your top is done. If you want to decorate it an easy idea would be to take some white felt and cut out circles and glue them on. Felt not having to be hemmed would be ideal imo.

20. Take your bottom brim and your lace. Figure out how much you want it to drape over the sides and this how far in to glue it.

21. Measure a line to glue your lace to so it will hang evenly all around. Glue down lace.

22. Glue your top and bottom brim together, sandwiching the lace in between. As you can see in my picture, my cardboard sort of warped and the center where I had planned to glue it would not stay together. Instead, I glued all the way around the outside with a lot of glue so it would penetrate all the way to the cardboard. If you wanted to line the hat, now would also be a good time.

Tada! Magical Mushroom hat!