This was the problem: an unexpected week in a eastern city at the steamiest time of the year, and no hat to wear. Well, no hat that didn’t look as if I was ready for a ten mile trek in the woods. I needed something to keep the sun from my noggin, but it needed to be urbanish. And very, very lightweight and cool to wear.
Did I mention that we were leaving soon, and I had about two hours to left to sew? Rifling through my pattern stash turned up Butterick 5111, view C. In the fabric stash I found some brown linen, and I’d recently bought a brown/green/gold chiffon print that would work for the scarf.
Because I wanted it to breathe, I didn’t use any interfacing. Instead, I topstitched the crown very close to the seam line, which gave just enough support to keep the shape. Of course, this also meant that the hat probably wouldn’t be able to support four large carriers for the scarf, so I just tacked the chiffon strip in place.
I used my new narrow hemming foot to finish the edges of the scarf. Then I folded each edge of the scarf to the center, lengthwise, wrong sides together. Mine’s considerably shorter than the one shown on the pattern envelope:
I turned it over, putting the hemmed edges underneath, and again folded the outer edges toward the center again. This formed a pleat on either side of the center of the scarf. Then I folded the scarf in half, and tacked the center to the center front of the hat, securing the pleat invisibly. I repeated this on either side of the hat just above the ears.
At the center back, I made a chiffon loop lined with the linen, and pulled each end of the scarf through it:
OK, I didn’t read the directions and didn’t do the scarf the right way, but I still ended up with a nice-looking, quick-to-make head topper. I say the pattern’s good. It worked, it fit, and it was true to size (I did use the chart printed on the pattern instruction sheet.)