White Sunhat with Daisy Garland

The purpose of making this sun hat was to practice before trying to make one for a child, possibly my niece who has gone back to live in Darwin and has no use whatsoever for one of my winter beanies!

This is a very special doll my mother gave to my grandma. When nanna went to hospital I was given this doll for safe keeping. I think my mum wants this doll back one day but when I offer she says 'next time'. So I am taking good care of her by making her a pretty hat, so she doesn't feel left out because all the other toys are getting clothes made for them, too!

I have real trouble reading patterns as I often say, I need to understand in my mind beforehand how what I am making will work. This means I have a lot of trial and error while I try and make up my own patterns when I want to do something a little more complicated. I looked at images of cotton crochet sun hat on google but did not follow a pattern or any one image idea. I started with a five petal flower then continued with a flat round, then stopped increasing down the sides, making gaps in the five corners. With the brim I started increasing again at the corners, filling in the gaps with increasing stitches. I mostly used double trebles (American trebles) for this hat.

The hat was a little loose on the doll and I made it that way so it wouldn't ruin the doll's curls. But it wouldn't stay on! Looking at the completed hat I decided it needed some more five petal daisies to match the one in the centre. So I came up with the idea to make a little daisy garland to go round the hat to keep it tightly on the doll. The daisies in the garland are the same size as the daisy on the hat, but are made differently so the tips of the petals are not joined in a round. The daisies on the garland were (3 ch, sl st, 3 ch US treble into centre cluster, 3 ch, sl st into centre) repeat 5x, then each flower was joined with 15 ch. I had to do the final sl st of each flower on the opposite side to front so they would sit properly on the garland, all nicely facing the front.

I'm still not sure how I will make one to fit a child though. This used cheap 4ply mercer cotton from Lincraft and a 1.5m hook. It might be a bit fine for a child's hat, but I wouldn't want a summer hat to be much thicker either. Making a child's sunhat is just one more thing on my 'list of things to do'!

<3 <3