July 11, 2022 

Introducing Lee & Pearl Pattern 2023: The Fedora Hat for 18 Inch, 16 Inch and 14 1/2 Inch Dolls — our new FREE pattern for mailing list subscribers.

CLICK HERE to join the Lee & Pearl mailing list for your FREE copy of Pattern 2023: The Fedora Hat

And don't forget - the Lee & Pearl Anniversary Sale starts tomorrow, July 12th and runs for two days only in our Etsy store!

Here's looking at you, kid...

A legendary hat style, worn by hard-boiled men and irresistible dames from the '20s through the '50s — and then again from the '80s onward — the FEDORA has an even more legendary beginning. The very first "fedora" was worn by world-famous actress Sarah Bernhardt in the French play Fédora way back in 1882.

Legend says that both the play and the hat were such instant sensations that the fedora has been an iconic style for men and women ever since.

Today, the fedora is defined as a soft, molded felt hat with a crease running down the center of the tip (that's hat-speak for top), pinches (depressions) on either side of the crown, and a wide brim that "snaps" up on one side (usually the back) and down on the other (usually the front).

In a molded felt fedora, these elements are permanently shaped into the material using hand-carved molds and industrial-strength steam — design tools that are out of reach for most home sewers of doll clothes.

But our pattern designer "Pearl" knew that dolls around the world were crying out for really cool hats. At FIT in New York, she studied both molded felt hatmaking and flat pattern hat drafting, and she thought there might be a way to recreate the look of the former with the techniques of the latter.

We are proud to introduce the result of Pearl's felt-to-flat pattern exploration:
Lee & Pearl Pattern 2023: The Fedora Hat for 18 Inch, 16 Inch and 14 1/2 Inch Dolls.

Pearl gave her flat pattern skills a real workout on this design, reconstructing the iconic molded fedora elements as curved fabric shapes and seams. That's right — this is an entirely SEWN hat.

Pearl drafted separate brim and under brim pieces to create the up-and-down "snap," elongated and narrowed the front of the tip to emulate the fedora "pinches," and used the recessed tip construction that she invented for our Pattern 2021: Glengarry Hat for 18 Inch Dolls to mimic the creased top of a classic felt fedora.

Then because all dolls need great hats, she resized the pattern for all three of our favorites: 18 inch American Girl®, 16 inch A Girl for All Time®, and 14 1/2" inch WellieWishers™ and similar dolls!

We hope that you love this pattern as much as we do, and make fedora hats to accessorize the wardrobes of all your dolls: girls and boys, vintage and modern, classic and trendy, urban and outdoorsy — and even tiny jazz and tap dancers.

And of course, you'll need this pattern to make intrepid girl reporter Kit Kittredge™ her own well-worn 1930s fedora!

Here's a BONUS included with this pattern: directions for easily resizing doll hat patterns for dolls with slightly larger or smaller heads!

Because each doll line has its own unique proportions, most doll patterns cannot be easily sized up or down by a single percentage. But doll hats are somewhat of an exception as there is only one critical measurement — the HDSZ (headsize, or head circumference) — that changes between hat sizes. As long as the change is small, you can size hat patterns up or down slightly for different dolls, or dolls with bulky hairstyles, using your printer or copier percentage settings.

For example, A Girl for All Time Clementine has a larger head than any of her sister dolls. It's a big enough difference that she has trouble wearing the same hats. But as a 1940s girl with bewitching green eyes, she really needs a cool fedora in her wardrobe.

We'll show you exactly the math we used to create this perfectly fitted variation of our 16" pattern just for her — and tell you how to do the same for your own uniquely-sized dolls.

We'll also help you find the right hat fabrics — and trims for your finished hat!

L&P Pattern 2023: The Fedora Hat includes information on choosing hat fabrics and trimming your finished hat with petersham ribbon, bias fabric bands, leather or suede cords, strips or braids, twill tape, soutache or cord trims, and flexible upholstery braids or flat "gimp" trims.

Then go ahead and embellish your doll hats further with bows, feathers, flowers, knots, beads, buttons, buckles, badges, coins, patches, small jewelry findings, tiny alligator teeth or anything else you like!

And for all the classic movie fans, we've included a 3-size printable Press Pass to tuck in your doll's fedora hat band!

CLICK HERE to join the Lee & Pearl mailing list for your FREE copy of Pattern 2023: The Fedora Hat

And don't forget - the Lee & Pearl Anniversary Sale starts tomorrow, July 12th and lasts for only TWO DAYS in our Etsy store!

Sign up for the Lee & Pearl mailing list to get our exclusive FREE subscriber Pattern 2023: The Fedora Hat for 18 Inch, 16 Inch and 14 1/2 Inch Dolls — as well as pattern announcements, tutorials and behind-the-scenes news from Lee & Pearl delivered directly to your inbox.

CLICK HERE to sign up for the Lee & Pearl mailing list