Wide-brimmed hats for toddlers seem to be surprisingly hard to come by. I needed to buy a hat for Bubs last year, as we were going away on holiday. Eventually I found one I was mostly satisfied with, but it cost more than I’d like to have paid and the prints were limited. I thought I didn’t have enough time to make one, but in retrospect, I probably spent just as long on the hat hunt as I would have spent sewing.

Fortunately children’s heads grow and new hats are needed. So this time, with a little less rush involved, I was able to sit down and make her a DIY sun hat. As with most DIYs, I now feel like making her a whole bunch more.

Originally I was going to look around at all the patterns for inspiration and then try develop my own. However, the one I used was so good that I’m going to link you straight to it and then go through the small changes that I made.

Toddler Sun Hat DIY // Wide-brimmed Bucket Hat

What you need

Main pattern: oliver + s DIY Bucket Hat Tutorial (*Edit: The pattern used to be free, but unfortunately they’d switched it to be a paid pattern now)
1/2 m cotton fabric (or two different fabrics if you’d like a different lining)
1/2 m iron on fabric interfacing
1 toggle with two holes (optional, for chin strap)

What to do

All steps where I did something different to the original pattern are shown in bold.

Download and print the oliver + s pattern (link above). Make sure to print at “actual size”, no scaling.

Cut out your desired hat size from the pattern. I added on an extra 2,5cm all around the outside edge of the brim (pieces 7a), to turn it into a wider brimmed hat.

Iron sufficient interfacing to your fabric, for your hat lining. I.e. Enough fabric must be interfaced for two brim pieces, two side pieces and one crown piece. My fabric was quite thin, so I also interfaced the brim pieces for the lining fabric layer. Cut out all your pieces. (With iron on interfacing, I find it easier to iron the interfacing to the fabric before cutting out your pieces. It means you only need to cut once and you know that the pieces will match perfectly.)

Follow the oliver + s steps to “assemble the cap”. Do this for both the outer fabric and the lining.

Chin strap (optional): Cut a long strip of matching fabric, about 50cm long, 4cm wide. Fold and press 1cm along both of the long edges, right side showing. I.e. fold each long edge into the centre and press. Next, fold this in half again and press. You should be left with a 50cm long strip, about 1 cm wide, showing the right side of the fabric on both sides. Sew through all four layers to create your chin strap ribbon. Thread your ribbon through the two holes of your toggle. (A single hole toggle could work too, if you tie a knot below it once the chin strap is sewn in.)

Next, attach each brim to it’s corresponding “cap”, and then sew these two layers together, following the steps of a little gray. She includes a brilliant little trick! If you’re adding the chin strap, sew it into the lining layer, when attaching the brim. Line each end of the fabric ribbon up with the joins in your caps side pieces. Sew it in at the same time as sewing on the brim, by sewing it between the brim and the side pieces at the join. Make sure that the chin strap is on the outside of the lining hat and that you do not sew it to other parts of the hat while going around sewing the brim. (I speak from experience 🙂 )

And then you’re done! Sit back and watch your toddler run around with their face and neck (and sometimes shoulders too) safely out the sun.

*pavement weeds for dramatic effect…

I’d love to see your Pure Sweet Joy DIYs. Show me on Instagram using #puresweetjoyblog or email me at deborah [at] puresweetjoy [dot] co.za. Like what you see here? Follow along on Facebook or Bloglovin and subscribe to the newsletter for exclusive access to the latest news and freebies.