A hat hack

With a change in the season and hopeful of seeing sunshine, we've dug out M's new summer hats. Being a year older, means the hats from last year are too small but the replacement hats are still too big and prone to blowing off in a slight breeze.

This is not a trait that endears sun hats to M, so we had to fix it.

After much discussion and research on the internet to show M what I had in mind, we settled on the idea of adding a chin cord with a button to slide up and down.

I got out some sample lucet cord, showing M how threading it through a button would allow it to slide but grip. I found suitable ribbon and buttons (much to M's disappointment as she was hoping to visit the local yarn shop), but couldn't find my normal lucet to make the cord. I ended up having to use a fall back lucet from my collection, which is not as comfortable in my hand as the one I prefer. It took a while to get a reasonable tension...

Lucet cord starting to take shape.

Lucets are very portable, so I was able to work the cord up quickly, even taking it to Ikea much to the consternation of another customer who thought I had a catapault!

A day or so later I cut ribbon and sewed it in place on each side of the hat brim's underside to form loops. I threaded a suitable button onto the cord and tied it in place.

One cord, button and some ribbon later...

And there you go, a new adjustable chin strap on a fisherman's style hat. M gave it a test today and try as it might, the wind couldn't blow it off. M approves.

We have a chin cord.

I just need to add similar cords to her other sun hats now!