Tutorial: How to Cover a Trucker Hat

How cute is this? 

I needed to come up with some fun crafts for a bunch of teenage girls to do (I am the young women's girls camp director at my church) so I looked on Pinterest for a DIY option for trucker hats and found this awesome collage of hats made by Tiff Brady Designs (who sells these babies if you'd rather not make one of your own): 

I knew this was what I wanted to make! So I set out to find a tutorial.


I found one here and printed the template. Unfortunately my hat was a different size since I ordered them from a different place than she did (and bought them in bulk at a discount) so I had to adjust it by trial and error a bunch of times. It was still helpful to have her template to begin with. 

Once I got the size I wanted I cut out my fabric, sewed the dart together on my machine and used Fray Check on the edges. I then pinned and hand stitched the fabric onto the hat with regular thread that I tripled up on to make it thicker. When pinning, I suggest sticking the pin straight through as opposed to down and back up like you normally would. This helps you avoid bunching and rippling. I wanted to leave the raw edges showing instead of folding them over because it was easier and I was going to have to teach 10 girls how to do this. 

My friend made one and didn't fray check hers and the frayed edges are super cute. 

When I taught the girls, they used embroidery thread instead which worked well (just make sure the needle you use has a big enough eye hole). They added buttons, ribbon, stitch work and more to embellish theirs.

So give it a shot! I wanted to add an applique (a cutout of a flower) to mine, or even buttons, but I thought the fabric was too busy for that so make sure to consider that when you're choosing your fabric.