Lining a Hat: A Tutorial?

For Christmas, as part of the Faerie's and Lady V's gifts, I made them hats similar to the one I'd made myself a while ago.

But, as an additional treat, I lined both of them. This was mainly because the Faerie was concerned her hair was thinning out due to breakage - she does MMA and suspects that the grappling and the mat work might be taking a toll on her hair.

I made a few alterations to her hat (which I've nicknamed 'Turkish Delight') in that I skipped rounds 13 and 14 and then proceeded to squish the next three rounds in where available, before finishing off with 5 rounds of sc. I lined her hat with a lovely fuschia pink polyester satin. I searched and searched, but I couldn't find a proper tutorial on how to fully line a hat with satin, so I kind of hob cobbled my own out of two other tutorials.

The first part comes from this lining tutorial. I'm working on the wrong side of the material right now.

1). Firstly, I measured out the material - twice the height of the hat plus two inches (I gave myself an extra two inches for mistakes, mismeasuring and seam allowance).

2) Then I folded it in half, with the brim of the hat facing towards where the two edges of the fabric met, half an inch away from the edges.

3) I drew around the edge of the hat in pen (don't do that, use tailor's chalk!)

4) I pinned the edges together as I cut half an inch outside of the markings I'd made on the fabric (and I would really pin around where the markings have been made as well, just to hold it in place properly)

5) For appearances' sake, I folded up the brim edges of the hat about half an inch and sewed along the brim, as detailed in step 9 of this tutorial. It'll give the hat a neater appearance when it's finished.

6) Then I sewed the two pieces together along the curved top part of the hat, so it finally became one piece and all the pins could be removed.

7) However, at this point, I began to worry about the fitting of the lining in the hat - I wasn't sure if I had measured so that it would stretch with the hat efficiently. Scratch that: I knew I hadn't measured so the lining would stretch with the brim of the hat efficiently. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have worried as much, but I did and ended up seam ripping out the sides of the lining , to give more flexibility in the brim and ruining the look completely. Oh well.

8) Then I turned the hat lining right side out, so the satiny side is now facing you and the not as shiny side you were working on is now touching the hat. I slipped the lining over the hat and pinned it into place.

9) To work out the amount of thread I'd need to use, I simply wound the thread around the circumferences of the brim twice, and then added 3 inches. You know, for one of my inevitable mistakes. To sew it in, I used this incredibly informative and detailed tutorial.

And then you're done! From start to finish, took me a total of 3 hours - the longest part was definitely number 9, sewing the whole thing in by hand. Took me about an hour and a half, but it was very therapeutic.

All in all, I love the way the lining contrasts with the colour of the hat- see why I called it Turkish delight?

In the next picture, you can kind of see the gaps I ripped in the lining in the top right and bottom left corners of the picture.

I bought the yarn for £1.49 from a charity shop 5 years ago and I used about 3/4 of it, the ribbon was about 50p and I only used half of the £1.55 lining.

£1.12 + £0.50 + £0.76 = £2.38

Yeah, New Look and the rest of the high street can go kick rocks *does budget dance of smugness*

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