About a week or two ago, my friend Karen told me that the night before, her five year old son, Oliver, was getting ready for bed and asked for a nightcap. And no, I don’t mean an alcoholic drink… Karen offered to cut the leg off of one of Oliver’s old pair of pajamas for him to use as a nightcap. Oliver said, “No, mom, I need a real nightcap!” So Karen asked if I could make a nightcap. I had never made something like this before, but I figured I could sure as hell try. Anything for darling Oliver! Immediately, I was envisioning stripes. I went to the fabric store and found two fabrics I liked and decided to make two nightcaps so Oliver could choose which one to wear depending on his mood. Oliver’s favorite colors are green, pink, and blue, apparently. But if you ask him, he’ll say ‘rainbow’. These are the fabrics I ended up with:
How to Make a Nightcap
Makes 1 nightcap
2 rectangles of a cotton knit stretch fabric-Choose one that does not fray (for size, see below)
matching thread
scrap paper
tape
tape measure
scissors for paper and scissors for fabric
marker
pins
sewing machine
Sizing: Use a tape measure to measure around the head of the person whose hat it will be. Measure around the widest part of the head, just over the ears. Divide that number in half. Add 1/2 inch to each half for seam allowance. This will be your width dimension. Oliver’s head was 22″ around, so I divided that in half (11″) and added 1/2″ to get 11.5″ as my width measurement. The hat will be 20″ inches long. Your dimensions will be length (20″) x width (to be determined by you).
Making the pattern: Using some scrap sheets of paper, tape together enough sheets to cut a rectangle of paper using the dimensions above. On one of the shorter sides, make a mark, exactly in the middle of that side. This will be the point of your hat. Using a straight edge and a marker, trace a line from the each opposite corner to the mark you made. See below:
Cut out the triangle pattern and pin it to your fabric. You want to cut out 2 of these shapes from your fabric for the two sides of the hat:
Remove the paper pattern and then pin the two triangles together, with the wrong sides of the fabric facing out. [NOTE: If you are making a pom-pom on the top, now is the time. Cut narrow strips from some of the scrap fabric of your desired width from the fabric (I did about 1 cm wide by about 5 inches long). Gather them together and tie a knot at one end, leaving about 1 inch at the shorter end. Sew the short loose ends into the top point of the hat, making sure the pom pom is being sewn into the right side of the fabric.] Using a sewing machine threaded with matching thread, sew 1/4″ seams on either side of the hat together. I used a zig-zag stitch, which seemed to work well. Do not sew the bottom edge! This is where your head goes into the hat! Trim the bottom edge so that it is clean and not jagged. This hat does not have a hem, so this will be the edge that you see. Using the zig-zag stitch, make some layers of stitches at the bottom of each seam to seal the side seams you made. You don’t want the side seams to start unraveling. These can be just 1/2 inch long and cross over the bottoms of the side seams, perpendicular to the side seams. Trim any loose strings or excess, iron the seams flat, and it’s ready to wear!
I wrapped them up for Oliver and dropped them by their house yesterday. He apparently was quite a fan! Success!
Have you done any fun crafty projects lately?
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