How to make hats and headbands for fancy dress - pirate and pilot



 You can order pirate hats and captain hats from the internet. Sources I found were in the USA, UK, and China. Ordering from overseas may take longer, unless you are a member of Amazon prime or are in a hurry and are prepared to pay.

Which is 'quicker'. Do you have time (now) to make, or time (all month) to wait?

If you have access to a printer in an office, home, or hotel, this is easy. Download the headband or hat from the internet. Lots of samples are available in craft websites and teachers' aids to other teachers and teachers' and parents' aids to other parents.

My main concern is the amount of black ink I am using up on my home printer. It costs money. You run out and delay important printing projects of agendas for meetings whilst you stop to change the ink. A headband uses less black ink than a full size hat.

Ideally, use a piece of black paper. Or buy a set of different coloured cars. Or save cards from various products using the plain white or coloured backs. You can then colour white paper with a felt tip pen, or with poster paint, or an offcut of fabric or a piece of disposable cloth.



Pirate Hats

A pirate hat is a three-cornered hat, known by its French name, tricorne. The black front has a white symbolic skull symbol in the middle. For added effect, you can place a one-sided black mask over one eye. The mask effect is a circle or square with added string. Better still, make the oval or rectangle slanting. You could use a pair of spectacles or sunglasses as a model to copy the shape. 

Pilot and Captain Hats

I was looking for an airline pilot hat. You can get captain hats for aircraft, ships, and buses. These are offered in black and white. I liked jolly red. I searched for the cheapest Captain hat from China. The one I picked, on closer inspection, had the word captain mis-spelled as CAPTAN. Not good for my audience as I am teaching English pronunciation and spelling.

I had some other false starts. One craft site said click below to download the template. But the icon to click on was missing. I moved the screen to large, left, right, up, down, still no icon.

Wikihow gave a pirate hat, but not a pilot hat. My husband asked me, 'Why do you bother giving links to other websites in your post. Surely, every reader can find their own?' 

I was thinking, surely I can research again if I want to come back to this project later today, a week's time, a year's time. No - it is a great time saver to have the right links grouped together. You can easily spend an hour or more hunting through dead end websites, not to mention getting distracted by the advertising. Wikipedia had a picture of a captain with a group of others, an a WWI bomber hat. So here are my favourite links. If and when I find more, I shall add them later.

Anyway, it is all fun of the day, a pleasing break from the news. 

The other items I liked are:

A hook made from a red paper cup and either the broken off hook from a hanger, or a still unused hook for curtain tie-backs.

A parrot for the arm.

A white paper plate as a face on which to tape a pirate's hat. Handy if you don't have time or energy to keep changing your hats during a zoom talk. Also avoids the risk of hats falling off your head and ruffling your hair.

Angela in a pirate hat at a Toastmasters Halloween party.


Useful Websites

https://www.coolest-free-printables.com/2015/03/19/cool-printable-pirate-hats/

https://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Pirate-Hat

https://www.vecteezy.com/free-vector/pilot-hat

Author


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to repair a torn Mark & Spencer slip and make the hem wider, Post 294

Image
What is this? My repair.  I have a lovely shiny, smart black slip, from Marks & Spencers. It has a slit with pretty lace edging.  But it is slightly tight. It tore from the top of the slit, diagonally.  I looked for another slip. The ones I found onlin were twice the price and not in a satiny fabric. I wore it torn. I repaired it several times. It tore again.  I gave up. I wore it torn. Nobody sees. My husband saw. He complained. What could I do? It is useless to keep stitching it. It just tears again. I needed a new solution. I thought of adding a godet, a triangle of black fabric. I did not have anything to match. tht doesn't matter a godet is often a contrasting material. But that's when you have several godets and they look deliberate. I hunted in my sewing box. Boxes. All I had was teeny scraps of cloth in unsuitable fabrics. And ribbons. I thought about what I could do with the ribbons. They were not wide enough. But I could sew one each side of the slit. t...
Read more

Blue H & M Dress, dress of the day 393

Image
  Angela Lansbury wearing a blue background dress from H &M. Photo by Trevor Sharot. The Blue H & M Dress Blue background dress has a white pattern. Blues are hard to match. But I had a white blouse, so I wore this. On the internet and on Facebook you can see lots of videos of how to tie a scarf, but mine is simply hanging, which partly obscures the cleavage.  Cleavage cover I had a choice. To insert a dickey or false front, also called a removable or detachable collar. I have one or two which are plain white.  The alternative which saves hunting for a matching dickey without distracting collar colours and embrodiery, is simply to add a fastening. I decided that a snap or press stud fastener in small size is qhich to fasten and unlikely to pull apart (as opposed to hook and eye. I like velcro but it can scratch your skin, so the press stud was the right andwer. You have to get the two sides exactly measured up from the point of the V neck otherwide you end up with...
Read more

Period Pants from Marks & Spencer & More, post 345

Image
Period pants from Savida. Pants, UK. In the USA they would be called underpants. They come in two colours, black or dark blue with a mottled effect. They are triple layer. Could be useful for hiking and travelling. Or when you have a cough.  A pack of three full briefs for fifteen pounds. I then googled period pants and found lots of results.  Marks Marks & Spencer do a pack of three containing three different colours, black, white and pink, for sixteen pounds.  They also do different absorbencies. The options range though light, heavy, and extra heavy. And more styles, such as pantaloon style, like short tight shorts coming half way down your thighs. You can also buy leakproof swimwear with the brand name WUKA. Wikipedia has useful worldwide reviews of practices. Wiki picture. Useful search words (alphabetically):  A-D absorbent, absorbency adult diapers briefs,  cloth menstrual pads diapers E-K full briefs,  heavy absorbency,  heavy flow,  i...
Read more