Making Bucket Hats for Archery

I'm having fun with archery and am progressing slowly.

 

(Bare bow @ 30 yards)

But as the weather is turning much nicer, I've been having a problem with the sun shining in my eyes.

I tried to wear sunglasses while shooting, but the pair that I have don't work (the bow string catches the edge of the glasses and they fly off). I also tried wearing a baseball cap, but the bill interferes with my bow draw.

So, I looked online to see if I could figure out how other archers were dealing with this problem. And the answer?

(Image from The Telegraph)

 BUCKET HATS!

The soft brim can be folded back to prevent interference with the drawing of the bow and still keep the sun out of your eyes. Luckily, I can wear hats and still look good, even if the hat is a bit dorky.

Now, a normal person would just buy a bucket hat, but noooo. I decided that it'd be awesome if I made some bucket hats out of my Doctor Who fabrics.

If I was going to look dorky on the range, I was going to get my GEEK ON. I looked online and found several free patterns for bucket hats, and proceeded to make mockups, and then test versions of reversible bucket hats.

There were tweaks to the patterns -- as most patterns I found were for children sizes, so I had to scale up from a child to an adult size. Luckily, head sizes don't need much shaping so it was just a matter of math. I took my scrap fabrics from other projects and made myself a couple of test hats once I had the pattern figured out.

A head form makes things easier when assembling a hat. It's not necessary. I had forgotten about the head form until I started making this hat with the cat fabric, which made assembly so much easier.

The hats are completely reversible. Now, I just have to get the actual Doctor Who fabric sorted. I'll take more in-progress photos for the next round of hats.