pirate hat tutorial

Better late than never! Here's the pirate hat tutorial. You'll love this, most pictures are taken in the car! I apologize for the 'briefness' of this tutorial- as you can see, there was a long car trip involved.

Here are my pirates in their felt pirate hats.


I hope it goes with out being said that this tutorial is for your personal use only. Make a hat for your your little pirate, make one for your friend's buckaroo, send one to Samster Mommy's tutu drive. Just don't plan on making them to sell. I sell these hats of etsy. It wouldn't be cool if you did too.

Ok, so you will need 2 pieces of felt for the hat body. This hat is bigger than a sheet of craft felt. You'll need to buy the felt by the yard. I just free hand the shape. This hat is 10 inches high and 19 inches from end to end. Here's the general shape.

You will need a second color of felt for the details on the front. This also will need to be felt from the bolt. To make the band, I trace the top of the hat on the second piece with pencil, then cut about 3/4 inch below that line and again 1 inch below that.

Stitch the band in place about 1 inch down from the top of the body of the hat. This hat can be made on the sewing machine or sewn by hand. If you are sewing in the car, you'll probably need to sew by hand. If you are sewing in the car with some machine, please let me know about it. Wouldn't that be great.

Trim up the ends when it's all stitched on.

Band sewn on. I actually don't think it's sewn on in this picture, but lets pretend it is.

Now, you'll need a skull and cross bones. You could probably make crossed swords or a ship shape, or something similar. Here again is the skull and bones laid on my cutting board so you can see the size better.

I usually just draw an x on the felt and then add the bone 'knobs' as I cut it out.

Here's the general shape of the skull.

Each one is a little different. All pirates are.

Stitch on the face. I usually use my air erase marker to draw on the face before stitching. Today, I drew on with pen and used that as the backside.

You can use embroidery thread or plain old black thread. Again, each face is different. I used to full in the eye ball with black. I've tried a number of different faces. I'm happy with this guy now.

Oh I'm home! Back to the sewing machine. Sew the two pieces of felt together.

The red lines below show where to sew. You'll end up sewing close to the edge. Check your seems when you're done to make sure you caught both pieces of fabric in all areas.


Make sure to leave the bottom hole open for your little matey's head.

Arrrg! You may find yourself making a whole costume next!



Why not add a felt eye patch?


If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Again, I hope you use this tutorial to make a pirate hat for your little one and one for the tutu drive going on right now at Samster Mommy. The Princess Alexa Foundation is a great cause and I'd love to see a whole lot of pirate hats heading their way!

I'd also love to see pictures of this or anything else you make using a tutorial found here.