DIY cozy winter hats with removable pom-poms

When it comes to coats, especially winter parkas, I always try to find ones that are in fun colours. I was really bummed out when my mustard yellow winter parka needed to retire and I had to buy a new winter jacket this year.

I searched high and low to try and find a jacket in another fun colour, but despite my efforts I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t black, white, grey or burgundy. (Is it just me or are there too many jackets in the same boring colours?!)

I ended up picking up just a plain black parka and after my initial sadness wore off I realized there is a bright side to having a neutral jacket – accessories.

Jacket: DKNY; tunic: Dynamite; jeans: ZARA; gloves: Hudson’s Bay; Boots: Aldo ; Hat: DIYed; Belt: H&M

I am now the proud owner of way too many hats, scarves and gloves that I’ve justified with the excuse “it’s Canada” way more times than I care to admit. (Is there a support group for winter accessory addicts? Asking for a friend.)

As I continued to fall down the winter accessory rabbit-hole, I ended up developing a thing for designer winter toques, which had me at war with myself for two reasons:

1. They’re ridiculously overpriced and I couldn’t justify spending that kind of money on something that I will either lose or need to replace next year (Canadian problems).

2. They’re ridiculously cute. Like, really, really cute.

So me being the crafty problem solver that I am, I decided to make my own customized hats!

I used my Cricut Maker to cut out designs using their iron-on material, (one of my favourite materials to work with!) but if you don’t have a Cricut you could still make your own hats by cutting out less intricate designs by hand.

Here’s what I used:

Cricut Maker (Cricut.com / Amazon.ca)
EasyPress 2 (Cricut.com / Amazon.ca) or an iron
Iron-on material, in the colour of your choice
Cricut essential tools
Standard-grip cutting mat
12-pack assorted pom-poms and snaps
Plain knitted winter toque (Amazon or Walmart)
Needle and thread

Step 1: The first step was creating my design. I was inspired by a Kate Spade hat that I fell in love with from one of their collections a few years ago.

I used Adobe Illustrator to create my design since I have a background in graphic design, but there are tons of shapes and designs on Cricut Design Space or there are lots of vector stock images available if you’re not comfortable with drawing your own.

Step 2: Once you have your design created and/or loaded into Cricut Design Space, it’s time to get cutting! With iron-on material it’s important to place it on the cutting mat shiny side down. Make sure you click on “mirror image” as well!

Step 3: Once your design is cut, remove the excess material using the Cricut essential tools kit.

Step 4: Next, it’s time to transfer your design to your hat! If you have an EasyPress, I would definitely recommend using that. The benefit to using an EasyPress machine is a longer-lasting and more professional transfer. If you don’t have one, a regular iron will work.

One tip I have regarding the placement of your design is to place the pieces closer together as opposed to further apart. I kind of forgot about the fact that the hat stretches once you put it on your head so the eyes on mine are ever so slightly further apart that I would have liked.

Step 5: Once the transfer is done, it’s time to sew on those pom-poms and snaps.

That’s it!

The best part about using the removable pom-poms is that you can swap out the colours to suit your mood. It’s liking having a 12-in-1 hat.

I even ended up sewing some of the snaps onto some of my other hats that didn’t have pom-poms on them, like my beanies from the BT21 Toronto Pop-up shop that took place in November (at the end of this post).

Hats are just cuter with poms, am I right?

I think I might make some iron-on scarves to match them next. Happy crafting! P.S. you can check out my other Cricut DIYs here.