The Hello Kitty Sweatshop

Yesterday Beka and I were struck by a sudden inspiration to make hats. A friend of ours has a pair of hats from Japan that look like animals, so we borrowed one in order to make our own -- but instead of just any old animal we decided to go for "Hello Kitty" in various color combinations.

What transpired as a result of our half-baked idea ended up being hours and hours in front of the sewing machine, with fleece and felt flying everywhere. But we both ended up with two of the cutest hats imaginable as a result of our long-winded efforts. Materials required: fleece for the hat, felt for the decorations, and yarn for ... pom-poms?

We measured the hat we borrowed, and drew up a pattern for it. It ended up needing a fair amount of alterations, but with Beka having a small head and me having a HUGE head, it was inevitable when we were both using the same pattern.

The body of the had was quite simple with four identical pieces shaped like a bloated triangle to create the round shape plus a fifth piece: a long wide band to make the brim. Oh, and those little pieces? Those are the ears!

We had planned on making hats of two color schemes: black and white. The black version lent well to "girl-punk" style, and the white version I decided to do "traditional" Hello Kitty, so once the body of the hats were made I began sewing on the faces by hand.

Meanwhile Beka was doing a trial run of putting together some pom-poms, a craft which neither of us have done since our Elementary School days. I also remembered a technique for "faking" a bow where you sew two layers of fabric plus interfacing or another stiffener together, then scrunch it up in the middle with a ribbon wrapped around tight. Beka did a real bow on her black hat with actual ribbon, but I used pink felt and the aforementioned "fake" to do my bows

It kept going, and going, and going. After adding eyes, noses, whiskers, bows, and in one case even a pair of ear flaps and pom-poms, we almost missed dinnertime! But eventually we did finish.

Here are the traditional style Hello Kitty hats in white (note: Hello Kitty actually has a yellow nose, but we only had black and pink felt. I'm not going to quibble about it cause it looks cute as is).

And here are the "punk-rock" Hello Kitty hats in black, including mine with the ear-flaps and pom-poms. Beka made a set of pom-poms, and might add those to her white hat later. She is still considering adding ear flaps to the black hat, but is as yet undecided.

And then of course we had to go out to show off the awesome fruits of our awesome labors.

Meow.