Making doll boater hat tutorial

I made hats for my Smuzhka Raccoons, and decided to share the process with you.

Materials:
- cardboard,
- thin fabric, preferably pure silk, cotton or viscose,
- ribbons or thin stripes of fabric,
- hot glue gun and glue,
- white PVA based glue stick,
- tools like scissors, knives, pencil, compass for drawing, etc.

1. Draw the hat brim on the cardboard.
Cut it out.
Make a radial cuts from the inner side of the brim to the center.
As the cardboard has thickness, leave about 0.5-1 mm allowance between your cuts and the brim.

2. Make a groove stepping out about 0.5-1 mm from the inner side of the brim. You'll bend the paper here.
Cut out the middle.

3. Cut out a stripe of cardboard. Make the crown of the hat, using the brim piece for size reference.
Join the edges of the crown using a piece of paper and hot glue.
Add a stripe of the hot glue to the inner side of the brim. Don't worry if it dries out.

4. Press the nozzle of your hot glue gun against the insides of the crown. The glue you added before will melt, and you can press the flaps of cardboard to the crown.
I prefer this method, as I found it tricky to add hot glue into the insides of the crown with a part of the brim glued already.

5. Press the crown to the cardboard and add hot glue to the insides. Wait it to dry.

6. Cut out the excess cardboard.
7. Add the layer of hot glue around the crown, near the brim.

8. Apply a layer of white PVA glue in a stick to the top. Try not to leave blotches!
Hot glue doesn't work here, as the surface would be too uneven, and the glue may leak through the thin fabric.

9. Apply fabric.
As you can see, PVA glue doesn't show through, even through a very thin sari silk I'm using.

10. Pull the fabric at warp and weft thread to the brim. Gently press fabric down with a nozzle of your hot glue, but watch out for glue to not leak from the nozzle! The glue we applied before melts a bit and glues fabric down.
Gluing the fabric along the threads weave first guarantees that you won't skew it and spread it evenly.

11. Do the same in other places. It's easier to proceed along diagonals first, then glue any loose spots.

12. Done.

13. Tuck the fabric inside, use hot glue to fix the edges.
It's easier for me to tuck part of the fabric, make folds, then apply glue and smear it.

14. Cut a round piece of fabric. Add the lining, pressing the fabric with hot glue gun nozzle. There is enough glue from step 5 to melt down and glue the fabric in place.

15. Done!

16. Add the ribbon around the crown.

16. Add the ribbon to the insides of the hat. Its width should be enough to cover everything you want to cover.
If you don't have a proper ribbon, cut a piece of fabric, wrap and iron allowances on the both sides, so you'll have a neat stripe.

17. Done!
Hint: Any blotches of hot glue are easily removed with a cotton swab soaked in ethanol.