Ta daaaa! The final piece to this little Halloween puzzle is a top hat. If you haven't worked it out yet, the character is Sir Topham Hatt. He's the head of the railway on Sodor Island, which is where Thomas and all his train/transport buddies live. Given K's obsession with Thomas, I'm really not too surprised he asked to be Sir Topham Hatt.
The minor issue is that Sir Topham Hatt is fat, in fact he was originally known as "the Fat Controller". K is not fat. At all. I'd considered making a fake tummy for K to hide under his costume, but decided against it as it seemed like more of a hassle to fit clothes around a fake stomach.
The other (maybe not so minor) issue is that, let's be honest, this costume will just make K look like an old dude to those not in the know. I'm not really sure what to do about this, but I kind of think that if they see my mini Sir Topham Hatt with Thomas, maybe a few more people would recognize the costume. Because of this, I'm thinking of making a Thomas out of a box, similar to K's piñata from his last birthday and having him "ride" in Thomas. It would be a bit more work, but I'm pretty sure he would go mental over it. Also, I imagine it would get more play time than the costume itself. I'll have to give it a bit more thought.
Anyway, I was totally dreading making this hat since, same with the morning coat I had a difficult time finding a tutorial on how to make a cloth top hat. Making it, sans tutorial, was way easier than I'd anticipated.
I measured around K's head (49 cm) and then measured for how tall I wanted the hat to be (11 cm). Then I cut two rectangles of thicker interfacing with those dimensions. Then I made an oval with the same diameter (49 cm) and then drew an oval around that about 5 cm bigger the whole way around. Then I cut two of each of the ovals. I gave a bit of a seam allowance and cut two rectangles out of the black cloth, and rectangles that would be big enough to hold the ovals and ironed all the interfacing on.
Then I trimmed the rectangles into ovals and got sewing.
First I basted the rectangles and little ovals wrong sides together, then went back and zigzagged the edges.
Next I sewed the rectangle to the oval and then sewed down the short side of the rectangle (making sure to keep the seam in the back). It's starting to take shape - wahoo!
Then I sewed the big ovals right sides together on the outside seam, flipped and topstitched over the seam. Next I basted the inside edges together and zigzagged the edge.
It's almost done at this point. With the main hat part wrong sides out, pin the brim to the inside and sew. Flip it right side out and sew a final seam to the hat bit to hold up the seam from the brim. (That sounds way more complicated than it really is.)
And that's it! Now we have a top hat. Admittedly it's not perfect - raw seams (even on the inside) look a bit lame to me and the brim doesn't lay perfectly flat, but it's good enough, in my opinion. Honestly, K hates hats. I'll be shocked if he even wears it. But can one really be Sir Topham Hatt without a top hat?!? No!!! But, I'll probably end up carrying it around the whole time.
Come back around Halloween to see little K all dressed up and to learn the fate of the hat.
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