Uncle Sam Hats

My mother-in-law recently asked me to make some favors for her bridge club. Since it's July, she requested Uncle Sam hats with a dollar bill attached. (I know nothing about bridge, but apparently her club gives away $1 prizes to the winners at each meeting.)

I wasn't quite sure how this project would go until I found this paper by Reminisce at Memory Bound. Since it had both stripes and stars, it was perfect for the hats!

Before cutting it, I made a "prototype" hat using scrap paper. Once I was sure of the dimensions, I cut off the star border, then cut a 5.5" strip from the red striped portion of the paper.

I created a cylinder with the red striped paper, carefully sealing the edges with Tacky Tape. Then I adhered the blue strip around the base of the cylinder. So far, so good.

Next, I cut red cardstock brims and adhered them using a fine line of Diamond Glaze, then let them dry for a couple of hours.

My plan was to attach three punched stars to wires which would stick out of the top of each hat, but the engineering dilemma was how to secure the wires so that they would stay in place. After thinking about this for awhile, I got the idea of putting a blob of HandiTak in the bottom of each hat into which the wires would stick. It worked!

I cut a "lid" for each hat and punched a small hole in it. I cut the wires and poked them through the hole and down into the HandiTak. Once the wires were stuck, I carefully glued the lid in place with Diamond Glaze and let it dry.

To finish the hats, I accordion-folded a dollar bill, secured it with wire and attached it with a glue dot to the top of each hat. I added some Stickles around the base to hide any blobs of Diamond Glaze, plus a few more dots to the stars for trim.

I'm happy with how the hats turned out. I hope the bridge club ladies enjoy them!