Preston's Gladiator Hat

Every summer on Labor Day my family plays croquet wearing silly hats. It's now a major family tradition. For Preston's very first croquet tournament I decided he needed a really special hat. We could have gone the tradition route and bought something super cute, but apparently their isn't a huge market for silly hats for infants! I needed to make my own.

It took me a while to decide what to make. I looked up silly hats, famous hats, costume hats, famous hat designers, etc. I finally came across this hat:

And I was hooked! I knew Preston needed to be a Gladiator; it would be silliness to the extreme.

I did some more searching for inspiration, and so that I could visualize a pattern. I found this image. Pay no attention to the creepy model.

Hurricane Irene came through, leaving us homebound on a Sunday, so it was the perfect day to make a hat! I took all sorts of measurements of Preston's head, made a model of the red-plume seam out of a hanger, and I made a pattern out of wrapping paper.

I bought gold fabric and red fluffy fabric, but so as not to waste the good stuff I made a mock-up out of some scrap. I was pretty satisfied after the first try. What can I say, I get things right. So then I jumped right in to the good stuff.

It took me ALL day, but I think the result was well worth it!

Intro and Hockey Bear

This blog has been a long time coming. I started one for my cutie pie, Preston, when he was born 6 months ago as a way for my family and friends to keep up with his busy little life. I've come to love blogging, and thought it was time to start one for myself. Preston will continue to update you about his comings and goings on his Baby Blog, but you can come here to see what's going on with the grown-ups!

For as long as I can remember I've loved working with my hands. My mom is a sewer/needle crafter, and she taught me the basics. From there I use YouTube and other tutorials to learn new skills, and I love to create my own patterns and designs.

Many of the projects that I choose take months to complete. To me, the process is more exciting than the finished product, so I often give my pieces away.

On this first post I want to share my project from last week. My brother and sister in-law requested a cross-stitch pattern of an ice-hockey playing bear. After scouring the internet I couldn't find anything that even came close. But never fret!! To the drawing board I went, and came up with a pretty cute (and awesome) design.

I started with two inspiration photos: a bear and a hockey player

My husband couldn't believe it, but the artist in me surfaced. From the two images above I sketched a design in simple pencil.

I own the program PC Stitch, and had I been near a scanner I might have cheated and imported this image right into the program. However, I think I would have had a lot more clean up to do than actual designing. To me, mapping out the graph is the best part! You can see in the image above that I drew guidelines to help me scale the image. I knew I needed it to be about 30 count as a finished product, so I used a ruler to break my drawing into 10/10 unit squares. I then used graph paper to chart an outline.

From there it was easy to chart the pattern into PCStitch, add color, and a background!
I haven't had time to actually stitch this design, but I'll be sure to share it when I finally do.