Easy pretty toddler hat
I decided I needed to have a go at making a hat for my little girl for the winter. I have made a few hats for friends babies and the problem I keep coming across is that my stitching comes up a bit tighter and smaller than in the patterns I have so far followed! This ends with the hats I have made being too small for the person I am making it for!
So with this pattern I had to have a bit of trial and error to get the size right for my little girl and I will take you through that process in the article so that if you have a similar problem you can solve the issue fairly easily.
The pattern I used is actually from red heart, it's a free pattern and available as a pdf download. You can find it Here.
It's easy to follow and the hat is almost entirely made with double crochet (U.S. Terms) and single crochet. You do need to know how to do a magic circle but there are a whole bunch of tutorials on how to do that on you tube and is something every crocheter should have in their basic skill set.
The pattern starts with a magic circle and increasing rows of double crochet.
The pattern has an option of four sizes ranging from small to extra large. I chose the large size because of my issue of things coming up smaller than they should. In total before starting the ear flaps for the large size it calls for 12 rows. I found at 12 rows it did not look long enough to fit my daughters head so I ended up doing 3 extra rows to give the length I thought looked right. If you have a similar problem to me you can do this visually until it looks right, just keep repeating the final row around until you are happy with it.
I decided not to add the ears on this hat so to finish off I just the ear flaps, the single crochet edging, the flower and the braided tails. I found the ear flaps were not as big as I would have liked them to be so if I make this hat again I will try to edit them for a better look. Here is the finished product:
