California Bound

I sent off a belated birthday present to California this week, but this gift was only overdue by two weeks, unlike the dinosaur capes (here and here), which were six and three months past due.  Phew. No more birthday presents until June, though I do have some new baby gifts to make.  Nuts.

Anyway, as I just mentioned, I sent this gift to California and what is California best known for?  Hippies?  No, not hippies.  Sunshine!  Or is that Florida?  Anyway, they are both sunny places and, to guard against those solar rays, I made my niece a batch of hats.  

I made five hats.  I had intended on making six, but the pattern pieces on the last one did not align properly, so instead of fiddling with it, I just abandoned the thing.  It was going to be the cutest little plaid cap, but I just wanted to be done with the project.

For the first two hats, I used the Prairie Bonnet pattern from Sweet Booties! by Valerie van Arsdale Shrader.  The one thing that I don't like about pattern books is when you have to go and enlarge the pattern.  That drives me nuts.  I would rather have a large sheet with 800 different pattern lines to trace, than to go out and deal with an enlargement process.  This book has one of those sheets, but it also has some patterns that require 200% enlargement.  

For this particular bonnet, I was required to enlarge the brim pattern piece, but I decided against it.  Instead, I estimated how large the brim would be and just sort of winged it.  I made two and it seemed to work out:

I am particularly fond of the red one.  I hand-tacked all of that daisy trim!

 And the back is just a ribbon in a casing:

For the next two hats, I used the Reversible Bucket Hat pattern from Oliver + S: Little Things to Sew by Liesl Gibson, except that I did not reverse them.  

I probably should have added chin straps, but I didn't.  I hope they stay on.  Here's a close-up of the brim details and my uneven lines:

For the final hat, I used McCall's M5865, which seems to be out of print on the McCall's site.  I chose View G...

This one is cuter in person.  The yellow fabric doesn't tie into a bow very well, but it is still pretty sweet.

And if you are wondering why I did not use my kid as a model, she was very uncooperative.  Turns out she is sick of anything on her head after these winter months.  Here she is pulling and tugging...she looked so cute in it, though: