How to Make a Winter Hat from a Sweatshirt Sleeve

Here is a great way to save some money on hats this winter while recycling your old fleece sweatshirts. With a little sewing, sweatshirt sleeves can be transformed into cozy fleece winter hats! This craft is really easy to make and doesn't take a lot of time. Here's how to make a winter hat out of a sweatshirt sleeve.

The sweatshirt hat craft compliments the sweatshirt vest or sweatshirt bag craft by providing a use for the extra sweatshirt sleeves. This craft accomplishes the aim of that craft by recycling the entire sweatshirt.

For this craft, you will need:

Old sweatshirt or sweatshirt sleeve

Scissors

Sewing kit

Pom-pom thingy (optional)

Chalk

Craft preparations: If you are cutting a sweatshirt, "test" the sweatshirt sleeve to make sure that the sleeve fits over the head. The fleece sleeve should fit comfortably over the head. It is best if the seam can go comfortably down past the eyes. That allows for cloth to fold over. If your head comes up all the way to the cuff, the sleeve is too wide to make a cozy winter hat and should either be used for another craft or altered to make it narrower. The alteration needed is to take a tuck in the bottom seam of the sweatshirt sleeve. Cut the sleeves off of the sweatshirt. The seam can either be cut off with the sweatshirt sleeve or left on the sweatshirt; it doesn't matter in this craft. Set aside the rest of the sweatshirt for another craft.

Craft step #1, measure the winter hat: Put the sweatshirt sleeve on your head and pull it down until the "hat" is comfortable. The sleeve should be too long; that way, you can fold over and hide the cut edge. Fold the cut edge outwards, and then fold the cloth again over itself so that the hat goes down as far as you like it. Using the chalk, mark where the fold comes to for future sewing. Unfold and invert the cloth and put it back on. Pull the cloth down and refold, then write with chalk on the cloth where to sew the winter hat closed. Allow an inch of space to avoid an overly tight winter hat.

Craft Step #2, sew the winter hat: With the winter hat still inside out, sew across the chalk line, using tight, neat sewing. If you are sewing a pompom thingy to the winter hat, draw the sewing to a bit of a point as opposed to just rounding it for the plain winter hat. Cut the remainder of the cloth from the winter hat. Turn the winter hat right side out and refold to the chalk line. To hold the fold in place, sew through the layers of cloth from the inside, not sewing through the outermost cloth layer so the sewing cannot be seen. This sewing should hold the fold of the winter hat together. Fasten the pompom thingy if desired. For a fancy winter hat, a second piece of cloth can be sewn over the fold. The sewing process I detailed at length in a previous article on making a Santa or elf hat craft, which you can reference.

That's it; your sweatshirt fleece winter hat craft is complete! The sweatshirt hat not only makes a comfortable winter hat but also works well under baseball caps, stocking caps, and fleece hoodies due to the non-bulky nature of the fleece winter hat. A homemade winter hat also makes an excellent Christmas gift.