“Because this day, a magical life lesson comes to you” Magic Man 2010

At Christmas Roslin was given some money, she was very excited to go and spend it on something fun, so off we went to Carters in Stirling and she bought herself a Magic Science kit.

Part of this kit was that it came with some lightweight card and sticky stars for the budding Science Magician to make their own hat. Roslin however decided that she wanted to use her hat as a megaphone and put it in her mouth, the tip got wet and then she pulled it off so she could yell into it. Now we were left with a dilemma, no budding Science Magician is a true Science Magician without a hat so hubby decided to nominate myself to make her a new hat. Roslin was very excited and made demands that it should be pretty, pink and sparkle and so I got to work.

Stuff you need

Now how do I make a hat out of that I hear you say!

First take a measurement of the head that hat is for and then you take you felt and roll it into a cone with the base of the cone a good bit larger than the circumference of the head measurement as the excess will go to making the brim of the hat.

I decided to use fabric glue to hold the cone together as I did not want any stitching to be visible Another option was hem easy or wonder web.

Next I made a frame around the hat made out of pipe cleaners. I am using a frame inside the hat so I can bend it unlike a card foundation which would be rigid.

Once a circle has been made around the hat next I cut up the excess fabric of the hat and folded it over for the first flap and under the pipe cleaners with the next and so on. The excess fabric was slightly longer than the frame and I folded it over and glued it into place.

Now that the foundation is attached there will be large gaps and visible pipe cleaners so next you need to cut two circles of the felt that are larger than the brim of the hat. In the center of both I cut a cross shape.

I attached the bottom circle first gluing it the the inside of the cone and then around the bottom of the brim and glued it. The top I placed over the top of the hat and glued the circle over the brim.

While waiting on the glue to dry I didn’t want the edge to curl so I used pegs to hold it in place.

Next step is applying stars. I used hobby crafts Glitter foam. These sheets are already adhesive although I found while trying to attach it to the felt with the movement of the fabric it didn’t hold well so again I used my fabric glue to hold the stars in place. To make the stars I simply drew on the back and cut them out. I liked drawing them freehand as it made them all slightly irregular in size and shape, however a template could be used if you want identical stars.

I was thinking for a while of adding a ribbon to the hat but I decided I wanted something a little different, and with my orders to make it sparkle I decided to go with a half meter of pink voile wrapped loosely around the hat. I secured it with a few stitches where the fabric bends in towards the hat. I didn’t want to leave it loose as it would either fall off be taken off and used for dressing up Roslin’s toys. The stitches also let me cover the joins where the brim meets cone. Once that was done, all that was left to do is to wait for it to dry.

Once dry the pegs were removed and the hat was finished for some Wizard Science.