I love these 8-panel hats! I bought my first one in middle school, a wool herringbone cap that I have continued to patch and wear. I owned a couple more in high school that are now lost to time, but in 2025 I found a great pattern to make something super similar! These are a great filler project, since they use small pieces that use up my scraps, and don't take more than a couple days. Hat Pattern by Picnic Palace, though I removed the stem and leaves from the top.

I've done my best to mark where each fabric and notion come from, "unknown" is just code for "has been in my stash for at least four years and I have completely lost track".

After experimenting with a messy checkerboard style of cutting patchwork out of thin strips to save time, I decided to test myself and make a more intentional gingham design. I had to do careful math to make sure I had the right widths of each material, but the puzzle was really fun to figure out and I was left with a whole new fabric to work with!

This hat came from a very silly discovery, don't rats look a little like teardrop shaped paisley? This is by far the longest I have spent on any of my hats. I made paper patterns for 6 different rat shapes, and cut them out of scrap fabrics. I only sewed the hat pieces in two sections of 4 before adding the majority of the appliqe, and sewed one rat at a time with a zigzag stitch. The ears are small pieces of felt, the whiskers are hand-embroidered, and the tails are couched yarn. Once both halves were mostly covered, I sewed the two halves together and filled in the seam with more rats. The thick interfacing on this hat made it incredibly stiff, which gives it a cool military shape but was nearly impossible to sew complex shapes on.