Saturday, October 15, 2016

A Crochet R2-D2 Hat


Halloween is around the corner and I am making costumes for my boys.  I finished the first part of Rowdy's costume, a BB8 crochet hat, and now I have to start Lucky's costume.  I wanted Lucky to also be a droid so he will be R2D2.  We have a pretty epic R2D2 sweatshirt, but I want to DIY the costumes for my boys as long as they will let me.


For this project, I chose the free Ravelry download "Star Wars Droid Beanies" by Jen Spears.  I used worsted weight Wool of the Andes Yarn Dove Heather (32 g, 71 yards), Celestial (19 g, 43 yards), Coal (6 g, 13 yards), and some remnant red (1 g, 3 yards) and a size H (5.0 mm) crochet hook.  I decided to follow the hat pattern as written and then unravel and start over if it ends up being too large for Lucky.


Lucky has never used a crochet hat as a winter hat before.  Wait, that isn't entirely true.  I made him a ribbed newsboy visor hat before he was born.  Since then I have made around a dozen fun themed crochet hats for other babies, but not quite for my own.  I'm glad that Lucky will have a cute crochet hat this winter (plus for part of his Halloween costume!)

Rowdy's hat had 54 sts on the last round.  This pattern has 60 sts for the hat.  We'll see if this is big enough or if I'll need to make it a little bigger.  I might also need to add a dc round in the middle since Rowdy's hat had 13 DC rounds and I KNOW Lucky has a bigger head.  I did quickly try on the BB8 hat on Lucky and while it was too short it did fit so I think the 60 st hat could work perfectly.

I tried it on Lucky after row 7 (not pictured), and so far so good.  I think that this might be well fitting.  Yay!  Whoops, I did round 6 as a DC round not a SC round.  Well, I thought I needed to make the hat longer anyway.  Maybe this will do it!


I finished the end of the gray rounds while Lucky was napping.  While I waited for him to wake up to try the hat on one more time I started working on the embellishments.


The pattern gives very general instructions to how she made the different shapes.  I am writing out exactly what I did for each shape here.  Hopefully this will help you out if you chose to make this hat, too.
  • Circle 1 (maroon)
    • Magic Circle. Chain 3. 12 DC in ring.  Join with sl st.  Cut yarn with long tail (do this for all shapes)
  • Small black circles (make 2)
    • Magic circle. CH1.  12 sc in ring.  Join with sl st.  
  • Black circle in gray circle.  (This looks like it might be a square on the design, to show the square in the background.  But it is easier to make a circle and this will look more like the projector
    • Magic circle in black.  CH2.  12 HDC in ring.  join with sl st.  
    • Switch to gray.  CH3, 2 DC in each stitch around.  join with sl st.  (24 sts)
  • Black circle in Blue Square
    •  Magic circle in black.  CH3.  12 DC in ring.  join with sl st.  
    • Switch to blue.  CH3, *DC, 3 DC in next stitch, DC* Repeat from * 3 more times.  (20 sts)
    • Join with sl stitch and fasten off.  
  • Black rectangles (make 2)
    •  CH10.  DC in 3rd st from edge.  DC 6 more. (7 sts)
    • (If you want a thicker rectangle, SC around making 3 sts at each of the corners.) 
  • Big colorwork rectangle
    •  With Blue, chain 8.  DC in 4th st from edge, DC 4 more times.  
    • Join grey.  ch1, SC across (5 sts)
    • Join Blue.  Ch3, DC across (5 sts)
    • Join Grey. SC around entire rectangle making 3 SC's in each corner.  
    • Join Black. SC around entire rectangle making 3 SC's in each corner.  
When it was time to finish the hat base, I shifted the colorwork section a bit.  I crocheted 10 grey dc's before the 40 blue stitches.  I wanted the seam to be at the back of the head.


I followed the instructions for the increases and then did the stripes as follows:  2 DC blue, 1 SC gray, 3 DC blue, 7 DC gray, 3 DC colorwork.  The hat is 60 sts around as written and this fits my almost 3-year old really well.


The pattern made the grey lines as chains attached at either end.  I attached the yarn, Ch3, sl st at top of a DC and repeated two more times for each of the 6 lines on top of the hat.


Time to sew on the embellishments!


...and weave in about a million loose ends!


Lucky was SO EXCITED when I took him to look at his hat in the mirror.  He knows all of the Star Wars characters, even though he has never seen the movies.  


Mr. Lucky now needs a base for his costume, too.  I have some ideas but if I run out of time he does have a nice set of R2D2 jammies.  


Rowdy needed to try on the hat, too, as he beep boop's around trying to crawl.  


I love these Star Wars crochet hats!  


Keith, Lucky and I dressed up in Star Wars themed costumes before Rowdy was born.  I will not be a death star again, I do not want to draw that much attention to my belly!   The easy route would be to make some side buns to be Leia, but I'm not sure if I'm going to go that route yet.  Do you have any last minute ideas for me?