Bonnet Tutorial

We're in the middle of the Prairie Primer for school this year. If you've never heard of it, it's a unit study-type curriculum based on all of the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Well, my girls have been aching for their own bonnets. My search for some sort of free pattern online was mostly fruitless, and so I got the crazy idea that if I figured out how to make them on my own I could do a tutorial. So, you're all my guinea pigs. Let me know if I missed anything, if anything's unclear, or just what you think...

Step One:
Cut out one crown piece (7"x14" rounded, with long side on the fold), two brim pieces (3.5"x9" rounded, with short side on fold), and two brim pieces of interfacing cut the same as the brim pieces (med weight works fine). Note: The photo of interfacing shows them unfolded.

Step Two:
Iron your interfacing to your brim pieces

Step Three:
Stich brim, right sides together, leaving long straight edge open. Clip the corners, then turn brim right side out and iron 1/4" to 1/2" hem to the inside of the long open edge. This will to be to sandwich the gathered crown edge in before topstitching later. Note: It's a bit stiff at this point so you may have to pin the ironed hem while it cools to hold it in place.

Step Four:
Unfold crown and stich hem on the bottom (neck hem). If you want to put a neck piece on to shade the neck, do that instead.

Step Five:
Baste the unhemmed edges of crown. Your basting should go from one end of the neck hem up and around the curve and back down to the other end of the neck hem. Pull basting so that the circumference of the crown equals the length of the brim. The photo shows how to check that measurement with both items folded in half.

Step Six:

Once you've got your basting pulled to the correct length, tie off the ends (I use slipknots) so it doesn't scoot. Note: In this photo you can see the finished neck hem from Step Four.

Step Seven:

Pin brim to crown, sandwiching the gathered crown edge between your ironed brim hem. You will use lots of pins to hold it in place. It should look something like this when you're done...

Step Eight:

Sew along the brim where it meets the crown. Not too close or you'll lose the brim piece underneath in places. I stitch from the top because that's the part you'll see when you're done.

Step Nine:

Add strings for tying. These can be fabric, ribbon, or whatever works for you. I handstitched some grosgrain ribbon on this one because it's faster than the machine work. It turned out like this:

Plus, I don't know if you can see it in that photo, but I added some elastic in the back of the neck so it wasn't so gappy, like this:

Well, that's it. How did I do? Did I miss anything or explain something poorly? It sure was easy to make, and now my other daughter is clamoring for her own, so I should go start on that one.