The Ultimately Upcycled Sun Hat

This is first of an idea that I had been thinking about for close to a year. While I love crocheting and knitting with wool, it has seemed to me for quite some time that there were just so many other interesting things to use instead of wool. These ideas for me include: plastic of various forms, disgarded textiles, soft metals and even grasses. I have had a lot of success with the plastics and textiles, though I still have yet to find time to try the other two materials.

These pictures show one of three sun hats that I have made from plastic bags. Even though we are a family that recycles paper, plastics, pop bottles, metals, and glass.... and have shopping textiled shopping bags to carry our groceries home, even we seem to collect a lot of unwanted plastic bags. I had been considering that there must be something much more fun to do than simply use them as garbage bags.

These sun hats were fun to make. Creating plastic material to crochet did take some time, but not so much that I was willing to drop my idea. And the finished product turned out to me much more practicle than even I had envisioned. It protects one from the sun as it is crocheted and therefor thicker than sewn material. However, despite the fact this is made from plastic, it is quite cool to wear due to the open spaces between the stitches. This is especially true when one is moving around.

As with all my products, I love to decorate them in some way. Last year I spent a lot of time working with flowers and squiggly lines, both of which seemed to be very popular and sold well. While I'm still interested in using these motifs, I've been having a lot of fun working creating text on appliques that can be sewn onto things. These appliques on this hat proclaim: Do Your Thing. This of course can be interpreted any way that you wish.