Linen and Leather Newsboy Cap

I can hardly believe it, but I made a hat!  Or more properly, a linen and leather newsboy cap.  And if you can’t tell, I’m quite pleased with my new creation.

I used the free newsboy cap pattern from Waffle Patterns.  The smaller of the two free patterns was just the right size for Thomas’s head.  Since the leather jacket I made Thomas doesn’t have a hood, a newsboy cap was in order.

I have a very special Grandpa who has always worn a hat (outdoors only, he’s a true gentleman) as long as I’ve known him.  Often I see him in a newsboy cap, looking ever so fine!  So when I was sewing this newsboy cap, I thought about my Grandpa often.

The fabrics I used were linen and leather for this newsboy cap.  The brown linen was leftover from this skirt, and the leather for the bill was the final scraps from refashioning the leather skirt into a jacket for Thomas.

For the lining, I used some chocolate brown lining from my stash.  I used the thickest, stiffest interfacing I had in my stash inside the bill.

The only change I made to the pattern was to use double fold bias tape to finish the inside of the hat because I couldn’t figure out how to do it otherwise.

Overall I’m pretty impressed that I made a newsboy cap.  It was a fun little diversion from my regular sewing.  I still need to tack down upper cap to the bill better, but the leather is a little hard to sew through.  Some newsboy caps have a snap between the bill and the upper cap, so it bears thinking on how to add a snap during construction.

Have you ever made a cap or a hat?  Got any tips for a newbie hat maker?  Leave them in the comments below…