I have made vests and bags from juice pouches. Juice pouches are easy-to-use in a regular sewing machine.

A year ago, while talking with my friends Rachel and Em, we were discussing things I wanted to make with juice pouches, and I mentioned that I would love to make hats. I asked, “What do you think would be the coolest hat?” and one of them suggested a fedora. Of course!

I researched how to make a fedora. I downloaded patterns and was tempted to buy books about making hats. But I thought, “I’m going to try on my own first, and see if I need a pattern.” Juice pouches or similar packaging might not behave the same way as the materials used in patterns, so I would likely have to play around anyhow.

I started by sewing together the tubes into a rectangle, five tubes wide for a total of 10 tubes. I cut the rectangle into an egg shape, although you can see in my final product that it became more of an oval.

Next I sewed a rectangle of tubes three tubes wide and six tubes long. It was two tubes wide at first, but then I realized my head was too big and added another row. I tried sewing that band on the oval with my machine, but it was too slippery and pins kept poking my fingers. So instead, I basted the band on to the oval by hand, and then ran it through my sewing machine.

Then I sewed a bunch of tubes together into two wide rectangles, large enough to be each half of the brim. I laid the hat on the shapes to get the right curve. I took a Sharpie marker and traced the hat. I cut out the curves, then basted the curves on to the hat. I used the machine to sew over the basting and to sew the two halves of the brim together in front and back.

I kept snipping with my scissors along the brim, to shape it nicely. I rolled up the brim in the back, to get the fedora look, and secured it with yellow buttons. If I didn’t put the buttons, the stitches could easily pull through the material because the thread is kind of sharp when you pull it tight in a tiny stitch.

The part that sat on my head had a few pointy bits, so I decided to hand-sew a thin strip of very soft yellow fabric over the edge. That was the most tedious part but it made it very comfortable. I used the same fabric along the front brim because it looked unfinished.

I would like to experiment with the design, changing the shape and size. Nora wants a purple one. It will likely be less work with juice pouches because they are larger than the powder packages.