Zaaberry newborn hats

a friend of mine wanted to give something to her co-worker’s brand new little boy and thought of me. they weren’t interested in cloth diapers, wipes or other such products (too bad!). i thought of a tutorial i’d seen recently at zaaberry on how to make three simple but cute newborn hats. they’re perfect for a (average) newborn from 0 to 3 months or even a somewhat largish doll (or monkey with dog tag).

there are instructions and patterns for three models: simple, knotted or ear-ed. seeing as i didn’t have particularly interesting jersey fabric and the t-shirts i could’ve used were a bit too worn for a gift on behalf of someone else, i decided not to do the simple one. i started with the knot, except i made a seam allowance mistake and sewed it too tight. but it’s still very cute!

i made the second one, again with cotton jersey, much better and with ears. aww!

for the third i wanted to recreate a hat my kids had with ears made out of super soft, warm white velour. so i used the bamboo and organic cotton velour that i use for my cloth menstrual pads. it’s less stretchy than the jersey, but when i finished it i couldn’t stop touching it!

here they are all done! when my daughter saw them, she asked me to make them exactly the same for her, too!

i decided to make a fantastic recycled gift bag, too. i admit: i blatantly stole the idea from rachele of arteteca (who creates just gorgeous jewelry from recuperated materials). when we met in person in january, she presented me with some of her fabulous creations inside a gift bag made out of a cereal box with jersey yarn handles. it’s so easy to make and i had scraps of jersey, so it  was perfect!  and i heard that my friend’s co-worker was very happy with her goodies! yah!