I swear one of these days I’ll catch up on photographing my newer projects and current WIPs so I can share. Until then, have another project from last Christmas. 😉
Today’s project is The Turtle Hat. If you guessed that this hat was a gift for anyone other than my father-in-law, you would be wrong!
To give a little background on this project let’s rewind to Christmas of 2014. My father-in-law saw the crocheted helmet that I made for T and requested a turtle hat. Because y’know… Helmet, turtle hat. They’re almost the same thing.
That’s the short story, but I feel like I should mention that he was very specific about it. He told me in great detail that the hat should be the body of the turtle and it was necessary that it have a cute, floppy head and legs.
I wasn’t very confident in my crochet skills at the time so for Christmas that year, I made him a hat with a turtle applique on it as a stand-in until I felt like I could pull off the ultimate turtle hat. (Check my entry here for more info on that.)
I let my desire to make a real turtle hat simmer for a few years until I felt confident that I could pull off what was asked of me. The biggest decision I had to make with this project was whether I should make the head and legs in a tube shape and stuff them. I was worried that they would get in the way more than anything, so I ultimately decided to do the cute little flaps instead.
Another design decision that I was unsure about was how to create a turtle shell texture. I almost made individual pentagonal pieces to attach to the hat, but I thought that would make it too heavy and/or stiff. It would also be much more time consuming than I was prepared for. Surface crochet it is!
And that’s how I ended up with this fella.
I’m really proud of how he came out considering I created this pattern on the fly. There are a few things I might do differently, if I made it again.
- I would make the inside lines thicker. I did a double line on the bottom, but I did single lines on the inside. (Or I might even do the idea with the pentagonal pieces sewed on and then surface stitch across the seams.)
- I would make double the amount of flaps and stuff them lightly so they would have a little more dimension.
- I would make the surface stitches looser. I made them loose enough where the hat would still stretch, but there was a little bit of an issue with the fit being a hair tight around the bottom band.
As with the last project, I still have the pattern notes so if anyone would like to see a pattern written for this, let me know in the comments! 🙂
Thanks for reading! xoxo