Hats in Japanese

Oh, how I love hats! I think they can be so fun. Flirty, stylish, and fabulous. I really wanted to try to sew some, so I went searching for a great book with hat patterns. The best book I could find was this one. It has an abundance of hat patterns, wonderful pictures, great diagrams, really the whole shebang, the only problem is...it is in Japanese. I don't know a lick of Japanese. Regardless, I bought the book assuming that I could figure it out enough to produce some cute headgear.

I have been semi-successful. I started with what I thought would be the easiest pattern. It has great diagrams and full pattern pieces, but it was difficult to figure out important details like seam allowances and such. I did it anyway by making a muslin mock-up first to measure it and see if it came together correctly. It worked well enough and now I have a new bucket hat! It is reversible, too! I am proud of my first hat and my ability to sew in Japanese.

This is my bucket hat embellished with vintage fabric, lace, and buttons. Here are some more of the cute hats I can make if I can figure out how:

Love the black check on this puffy guy.

Love the patterned fabric on this one.

So cute with braids.

Does anyone know what the seam allowance should be?