Ear flaps – Hopefully Creative

Black Earflap Hat

Warm but neutral ear coverings to get me through the end of winter.

I’ve been wearing my plaid earflap hat a lot this winter. It’s been cold and my ears seem to want to freeze without earflaps. The coat I’m currently wearing is red, and it all .. doesn’t really go together. So I set out to make a new, slightly more neutral hat. I grabbed the leftovers from a larp cape project and a scarf and got to work.

For this version I used the Whitney Sews pattern for a newsboy hat with some modifications. There were still some brim inserts in the hoard, so I traced that shape and used it as the brim. Then I took the original earflap pattern from the first hat add added those too. I did decide to cut a wedge off the top so they would fit better.

Close up of the point where 6 seams in a black hat intersect.

I’m quite proud of the point matching of the top of the hat and the lining. It turned out very neat, but made the hat also look a bit naked. So after faffing about with my button press, I managed to make a nice covered button for the top, to finish it off. I hope this one becomes a firm favourite even if the amount of poof in the hat is less than I hoped for.

Deerstalker Witch Hat

Finally a hat for all the winter witching

We had a sort of vague commitment to doing some sort of Halloween in the office since it was on a workday for the first time in a while. So I decided that I was going to bring the project, which I’d been eyeing up for years, to life. You see, in 2018, Bernadette Banner posted a video about a Winter Witch Hat and then another one about a similar hat in 2020. I’ve been thinking about recreating that for literal years, but never actually got around to it. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to make myself a new hat, suitable for winter.

Since the videos above weren’t full tutorials, I scoured the internet and found some other examples of people taking on this project (ash_rock and Fresh Frippery). This last one is an actual tutorial so I took those instructions and ran with them. Since I wanted the hat to sit more ‘over’ my head than ‘on’ my head, I increased all the measurements. The original plan was to make it out of black wool, but since that fabric is quite precious, I decided to make a test version out of left-over fabric from these pants.

Two brims, one crown and two ear flaps were cut from the plaid. The brims and crown were interfaced for some stiffness and the earflaps were lined with some nice warm fleece. I put the hat together and then decided to line the inside of the crown too. I found some of the interlining from my red coat that matched well in colour and sewed it in. The ugliness is hidden with some bias tape. If I’d been fully awake throughout the project, it probably would’ve gone a lot quicker. However, I did finish it in a day and I’ve been very happy with it. I think it’s cute and I love the little fold-over point. If I make it again, I’m going to make the hole for my head a little bit bigger, but it’s not too annoying this way.

Plaid Earflaps

Using more leftovers to make a new hat that also keeps my ears warm!

Recently, I got the urge to make a new hat. In my head was the idea to make a witch’s hat like this one from Bernadette Banner. But then I remembered that a) I wear my hair up nearly always without any pins and it needs to be somewhere, b) I want to wear a hat to keep my head (and ears) warm because winter and c) I wear hats to keep the rain out of my eyes. So on to plan b, make a ‘baker boy cap’ type thing, but add ear flaps! I grabbed the one cap that I’d made before and popped it on my head to see where the ear flaps needed to go. Turns out that they would have to be directly beside the brim, so that was a lucky coincidence.

I grabbed some scraps from the green plaid pants that I have kept all these years. Eked out all the pattern pieces exactly and got to work. The ear flaps were lined with a black fleece for additional warmth and I put in a braid of the ‘yarn’ I’ve been using for stuffed animal eyes, to tie under my chin. I sewed most of it together and then had to make a lining. I chose to just put my pattern pieces down, make a circle-ish shape out of it and add the darts back in. It seems to work fine so far. For the button on top, I found a self-cover-button-kit. I’ve been attempting to use that kit for a while now and never managed to make a button. However, I finally had an epiphany: I just needed to be stronger! In comes a glue clamp thing that I’d never used before. So I popped the pieces in, and clamped the clamp over them and tightened, something I couldn’t manage with just my hands. The bottom of the button suddenly stayed in; miraculous. I made two other buttons but ended up not using them.

The hat’s been on a few test rides now, and I think it’s wonderful. I may look like a bit daft but I’ve never let that stop me before! My ears and head stay nice and warm, and it’s got a lot more of a brim than the knitted ear flap hat I was wearing all through last winter.

Ear Flap Hat

So, what do you do when you agree to meet a friend for a crafty evening but have decided to stay in town to get your hair cut? You buy a ball of yarn and circular needles and take those along. I had wanted to make a hat with ear flaps for a while now, since it is getting colder on my bicycle and my current hat (with owls) doesn’t cover my ears. So I cast on 50 stitches provisionally (I thought I had cast on 55 for some reason – counting is hard) and started knitting. I had about half a hat finished at the end of the evening. The next day I found the tasseled earflap hat pattern on ravelry and wrote my limited notes here.

I recalculated their instructions based on my row gauge and at that point determined that I had failed knitting 55 stitched as I thought. According to my calculations I needed 52 stitches, so I increased a little at the bottom. Then I knit the flaps starting with 12 stitches and decreasing one on each side every knit row. I ended up with two stitches and added a third one in the middle to make the bind of smoother. There were at least three different bind off attempts but in the end the super stretchy bind of was used (where you do a yarn over after the previous stitch, knit the next stitch and slip both over the last knitted stitch). Then I returned to the top, removed my provisional cast on an continued knitting. I decreased five stitches every second row until there were six stitches left over. Then I added a doubled strand of yarn through each of the left over stitches and pulled those tight.

The finishing touches knitting wise included adding the six strands to knit the ear flap closures, making a knot at the top, weaving in my 2 ends from the middle cast on and adding a tag for the back. The ear flaps are more to the back, so I needed to indicate which side needed to be at the back of my hat. I did this with a small bit of spare yarn. It works well!

After my first test drive, I determined that the wind does come through the knitting quite a bit. So I dug through my stash and found some matching fleece fabric to line the ear flaps with. I sewed it in and test drove my hat again on what felt like the windiest second day of Christmas I ever encountered. This was a significant improvement, so I was very happy with this decision. My hair also fits in it, it may not look pretty but it does fit. All in all, not bad for effectively 2 evenings of knitting and about an hour of finishing.

Smurf Hat

I’m slowly but surely attempting to make a winter coat, although it’s been in a corner for a while now. It will have a large white/black/blue check pattern with houndstooth within (see below). I am planing to add a yellow lining to the coat and at some point in time (October 2015) decided that it would be a good idea to make hat to go with the unfinished coat.

Fabric

This required yellow and blue yarn which I already had. While looking through Ravelry I found a free pattern for a Garter Ear Flap Hat by Purl Soho. I knit it up in two days because it was really easy and fast. Then I put it on for something outside, and everyone told me that it looked fairly stupid. There was a pointy end which elicited comments such as a condom, a smurf hat, too bright, a minion and some other non-flattering things.

Old smurf hat

It sat untouched upon my globe. Until yesterday, when I took out the pointy bit and finished it like a normal hat. I also finally finished the ends and it’s officially fit for wear. It may still look fairly minion-y, but I’m hoping it doesn’t look like a condom anymore..

Smurf hat

It covers the ears nicely but I think I used needles that were too big, and the wind does come through quite easily. If I were to try another iteration I’d only use the ear flap section and make something else for the body of the hat. For the project details (which are few) check Ravelry.

Tag: Ear flaps