Monkey Hat

         Well the monkey hat isn't for this monkey, but I found these pictures on my camera.

        My DIL mentioned that I should learn to crochet so I can make one of those cute monkey hats...wasn't sure what she was talking about so I did some research. This is the picture I found...my crochet skills would not be up to that until little Parker is in high school and I doubt he'd want it then.  First I considered fleece, but the fleece I had was too dark. Then I spied a hand-me-down shirt that oldest son out grew. I knew I had saved that beautiful soft fabric for something. I also had some red fleece and white t-shirt fabric, so no shopping necessary

After you find the fabric, you need to make a pattern. If you have a similar hat you can draw your own. Or you can go online to this site  or even pay $4 from here for a pattern and get a basic hat pattern.

This particular hat had 4 pieces for the body...I changed it to just 2 rectangles and a circle for the crown of the hat.   I only used a single layer of fabric for the top part of the hat.

     
   The band/ear flap part is a double layer, so you need to put right sides together, sew along bottom edge and turn right side out....sorry no pics for that.

Like I said, the crown of the hat is a circle, it gathered a bit when I sewed it to the lower part. If the wearer of the hat is handy, do a quick measure to see if you need to adjust anything.  

I need to get a picture or name of the type of seam I used to join the pieces. For experienced sewers, you layer the edges, right side to wrong side. The beauty of t-shirt fabric is that it won't fray so the edges can stay unfinished.  

You can tuck the ears into the side seams the first time you sew the seam or add them later after you see how the face is going to look.

The ears are just a rectangle with the two corners rounded...cut them from the cuff fabric and no edges to worry about...you could cut them from the t-shirt knit, but then cut 4.

I folded the crown of the hat into quarters, marking with a pin. Pin the crown in place with the white fabric on top of the grey fabric. I used an over-lock stitch if you have a real over-lock machine this would be a breeze!

I covered the seam with the red fleece and simply zig-zagged it in place.

The ear flaps/hat band get sewn in place with the layered method, stitch with a stretch stitch.

The nose is just an oval of white t-shirt fabric (double thickness) and the mouth is more fleece. They eyes are just buttons sewn on with white thread. I thought about adding red tassels to the ear flaps too...the tassel on the top is just 8-10 narrow strips of fleece, stitched together in center and then stitched on the top.

Note: If you are having trouble with too much stretching, put tissue paper under the fabric as you sew, tear it out afterward.