Bee Hat

This hat started as a joke a few weeks ago. Since we are all stuck at home, I've been making a lot of stuff. Including as apple-themed hat for a costume I'm working on. While working on the apple hat my mother and I had been discussing bees and bee houses. I jokingly told her I was going to make her a bee hat to wear to work, as she had been telling her coworkers all about my projects and our bee conversations.

At that point all that really became of the bee hat was some hurried sketches and a couple pieces cut out.

Fast forward to last week, I saw the Finish it Already challenge AND I received an email telling me world bee day was coming up...I knew I had to finish this hat. But of course I procrastinated some more and didn't finish it in time for world bee day :( But when this silly hat challenge opened I knew my hat would bee a better fit there.

Disclaimer: This hat is based strongly off the pattern for a pumpkin cat hat by Choly Knight, the pattern to which can be found (along with a ton of other cool stuff) for free on her website- https://cholyknight.com/free-projects/

I strongly encourage anyone who likes or wants to try sewing to check out her website, she has really cool patterns and easy to follow instructions.

• Black fleece
• yellow fleece
• White fleece or felt
• Black felt scraps
• Blob of stuffing about the size of two fists (optional)
• Needle and Thread
• Printed out patterns

You shouldn't need more than 1/4th yard of any color.

As previously stated my pattern is strongly based off a pumpkin kitty hat. I modified the pattern to create stripes and then made wings, a stinger, and eyes instead of cat ears and a stem. I will attach files with both patterns. The pieces you will need will be, a big hat piece(bee face/butt piece), a small hat piece(bee body piece), a headband, a stinger piece, a wing piece and eye piece.

Once your pattern is printed and cut out you will need

• 1 black felt stinger
• 1 black fleece headband-This is a strip of fabric 2.5"x 21"
• 1 black fleece small hat piece, 1 yellow fleece small hat piece
• 2 black fleece big hat pieces, 2 yellow fleece big hat pieces
• 2 black felt eyes
• 4 white fleece or felt wing pieces

Once all these pieces are cut you will need to cut the big hat pieces down the middle. I found this easiest by folding it down the middle and holding the round sides together while cutting the middle.

Please note my hat size should fit most from teen-adult. If you want to scale down for a child size hat please see Choly Knight's pattern and use the corresponding size for the small hat pieces and 2-sizes larger for the big hat pieces. https://cholyknight.com/2019/10/25/kitty-pumpkin-h...

Take your cut-in-half big hat pieces and line them up so they make half yellow, half black whole pieces. Lay together these pieces, one yellow and one black, on top of each other with nice sides facing. Sew together along the straight edge. This will give you a large hat piece.

Once these are all sewn you should have 4 two-tone big hat pieces. Now take One of your small hat pieces and line up a big hat piece on either side with opposite colors touching. Lay nice sides together and sew along curved lines to attach into a 3 piece section. Repeat for other half.

Now you have two halves of the hat assembled. Set this aside to make the wings.

To make the wings, take your 4 wing pieces. Split into pairs and layer one on top of the other. Sew together to make two wing shapes, leaving the tab at the bottom open so you can flip when done. When done, flip the wing right-side-out and stuff with about a fist of stuffing each. Then stitch the opening closed.

For the stinger, fold your stinger piece in half and sew along the longer straight side to create a kind of cone. Once sewn, flip so the seam is inside. If you would like it to have a little extra poof, I added a tiny bit of stuffing, but felt is pretty stiff on its own so you can always leave it empty too.

For the headband, lay the headband out flat, fold in half long-ways and pin. Sew together along the long edge then sew the two ends together to make a thin hoop.

You can do these steps in any order, I am going to list them in the order I did them but it might be easier to do the eyes and stinger first. I waited to make sure they would look how I wanted with how the hat sits, but I don't think it would be too weird if you added them first.

Wings- figure out how far from the top you want them and either pin them there or mark the inside of your yellow fabric. With your front hat piece (yellow small hat piece) laying good-side-up pin the wings in place so that the rest of the wing lay pointing to the outside of the hat. Then lay the back of the hat (black small hat piece) on top, good-side-down. Pin the two pieces all along the big curved edge. Sew together leaving the bottom open.

Headband-Once the hat base is assembled I added the headband so I know exactly how that seam is going to look and sit. This is probably the trickiest part of the hat. The band is generally slightly smaller than the hat itself. This is ok. The best way I have found to avoid bunching is to pin alternating sides, not around the circle. To start lay your hat out upside down with your headband on top so that the sewn seam is touching the rim of the hat. Pin the seam where you sewed the band ends together to the back of your hat. Next hold that point and stretch the opposite edge of both the band and the rim to find their centers. Pin together, you will have more rim on both sides than band. Next find the center of both on one side (between the two pinned points) pin together and repeat for the other side. You may want to continue this process to add one more pin between the 4 already pinned. Otherwise sew the rim and the band together all the way around the hat. Unpin and flip the band down so the seam between band and rim is inside the hat

Eyes- Again figure out where you want them. I like my hat to sit back on my head, kinda slouchy like so I put them a little more forward. Mine are positioned about 2 inches from the band and about 1.5" from the edge of the small yellow hat piece they are attached to. Stitch these on with black thread.

Stinger- Mine is centered about 2.5" from the bad on the small black hat piece. To sew it on I left the end open and pinned it to the hat. Then went around twice with black thread, stitching into the hat and back up through the stinger.

Now you should have a cute puffy bee hat! Wear it proudly!