I have recently started designing my own patterns. To begin with I found myself scouring the internet for the purpose of finding information. How DO you measure hats in knit and crochet? Because if I’m putting the pattern out there, I want it to be with accurate sizing. As a result people can be confident that I have done my homework and I know what I’m talking about. Granting that my research is correct, that is. 😉
*This post may include affiliate links that I can earn a small commission from if you shop through them at no additional cost to you. Think of it as another way to help support my small business. ☺️ Please see my full disclosure for more information.*
What started this journey?
I found equations and calculations galore. And they all helped tremendously. Consequently I will share these findings with you today.
When it came down to it, when the hat was stitched up and complete, I wanted to know for sure if it was going to fit. Therefore I needed a model. Actually I needed a head in the size category I had just created the pattern for. Well Houston…we have a problem. Incidentally I don’t have newborns/infants or small toddlers in the house anymore. Furthermore we just moved to a new town less than a month ago. As a result I know NO ONE with children in these age ranges. So, short of stalking poor unsuspecting mothers on the street and asking them if I could borrow their child’s head for a minute to try on a hat, I needed a better solution. LOL Actually I’m pretty sure I would go to jail for that. Worst yet I’m not sure if they’d let me knit or crochet in there. 😉
So what can you do??
So, what’s a person to do when they want to know for sure if their hat is going to fit someone? You may be making a gift and sending it off. Or you might even be a designer yourself and you want to know if you are accurately writing your patterns. Whatever the case you want to make sure it’s the right size. Indeed, how do you KNOW, know? With this in mind, hopefully today’s blog post will help you all out. And so I’m about to take you on the journey I’ve been on the last 2 weeks for the purpose of figuring out how to accurately determine a hat size.
Step 1:
Math, Math, Math and more Math. 🤓 So, you want to know how big to make your hat? Therefore you might need to do a little calculating. However, if you buy any of my patterns there will be a point in the pattern where I will have done all this math for you. Hence all you need to do is measure.
Here is the chart from the crochet yarn council that I found on a sister blog: Crochet Geek
This is your starting place. Here is the size chart that I used to calculate all the hat sizes in my patterns. Now, these of course are the average head size standards. As a matter of fact your child may not necessarily fit exactly in their age group. For this reason on my patterns you will find the head size in inches at the start of the pattern that the hat will fit. Hence just take a tape measure and measure your child’s head. Then you will know if that hat size is going to be a good fit or not.
How do you use this chart?
So what do you do with this chart? Well, next you will need to do a little calculating. All hats start out very similarly. You start with a few stitches. Then you start building up until you have reached the point where you are going to stop increasing. After that you just stitch that number of stitches for the rest of the hat to build the sides. Accordingly, after that last round of increases is made you should have a flat circle in front of you. Even more you should be able to measure the circle at that point to determine if this hat is going to come out to the proper head circumference. With this in mind use the following equation:
*Head Circumference Equation: (Desired Head Circumference ) minus 1 Divided by 3.14
For example, you would like to make the newborn size hat to fit a head circumference of 12″. All hats work best if they fit a little snug. And so you actually want that finished hat to measure about 1 inch smaller than the head circumference. Therefore your equation will look like this:
(12-1)/3.14=@3.5″ (I usually just round to the closest measureable size. In most cases I go a little bigger to give room to grow. However not much or it will be too big to wear now).
Step 2:
When you have finished your last round of increases in the pattern, you will lay down that circle you’ve made. Make sure to lay it flat on a table. Then take a tape measure and measure across the full circle. For this example it should measure 3.5″ at this point if you want it to fit a 12″ head size.
*Hat Length Equation: (Desired Head Circumference) Divided by 10 Multiply 4
Again for the above newborn 12″ size example, this would look like this:
(12/10) x 4 = 4.8
If you use this equation your hat length will come out different than the lengths listed in the yarn council’s chart provided above. You will have to determine which works best for you as far as which length you want to aim for. To be honest I have found the chart to be a little on the longer side. You can see for a newborn hat it’s listed with a length of 5.5″. In contrast to the 4.8″ we got in the equation above. Additionally I have found this to be true when I have been stitching my own hats. As a result I lean somewhere between the chart size and the result of the equation above.
Step 3:
You have now reached the point where you have stitched up your hat. You made all your calculations . Indeed you have the hat finished and ready to go. However you look at it and think, is that really going to fit? Did my calculations work? Did I make a mistake? How do I measure this?
You run all over the house with your tape measure and measure every doll’s head your kids have in sight. None of them are the size you need!! You drive over to Hobby Lobby and Michael’s searching for something that will work as a head with that circumference to put the hat on….NOTHING!! You search JoAnn Fabric’s website and all 3 stores only have Styrofoam heads in an adult size. I don’t need that!! I have an adult size head, if I want to measure those hats I’ll try it on myself! How do I measure this hat that’s supposed to fit a newborn baby?? Or that 3 month old nephew I have across the country? I want to know BEFORE I send it how it’s going to fit. Here’s a little trick I found when I was in this dilemma yesterday…..
BALLOONS!!!
Yep!! That’s right….balloons! Who would have thought? I was scouring the internet for a Styrofoam baby head or something I could use to measure my hat sizes. Consequently ran across a tutorial for making a paper Mache head. To be honest I didn’t want to get too involved or messy with my model head. I just wanted to know if my hat would fit. So…I found a bag of balloons and blew one up to the circumference of the head I was stitching the hat for. And Viola!! I had a baby size head to test my hat on!! YAY!! I was quite excited about this discovery. :0)
Going a little further…
However I still needed to get a better idea of the whole picture. With that in mind I used the hat length I had calculated to draw the ears on the balloon. This was for the purpose of seeing how the hat would fit all the way down to the ears. First you need a tape measure. Then I measured from the center of the top of the head and down one side. After this I repeated it again on the other side.
Wrapping Up…
Now, is this an exact measurement of a real baby’s head? Probably not. In fact I’m sure it’s off a bit in some way or another. Nevertheless it beats trying to track down a Styrofoam head to measure it. That probably wouldn’t be perfect either. However there is a downfall to this trick. Indeed your balloon is going to deflate. In fact, that could happen by the next day. On the condition that you are looking for something more permanent to continuously measure hats in that particular size, this isn’t it. It’s not a long term model for sure. Consequently you may end up buying a lot of balloons. So many that you will have wished you had just invested in the Styrofoam head. Even so, for a quick solution, this is really the best way I have found to measure a hat.
I think that about covers everything I learned about hat sizing the last few weeks. If I think of anything else I will come back and edit the post, but for now that’s all I’ve got. I hope this helps someone else who has been as desperate as me to get this hat sizing thing figured out. :0)
Good luck with your hat sizing and as always….
Happy Stitchings!
🧶💖
~Mindy~
*I found these equations on so many different websites. For this reason I couldn’t decipher who the original source was to reference here on my blog. I just wanted to notate that I did not create or come up with those equations on my own. This was information I found in my lengthy search on this topic.
