Cute Kids Watermelon Hat

Hi Everyone! It’s Melanie from Artzy Creations here with another DIY project for you. This is a project for a Cute Kids Watermelon Hat. Both of my girls since they were babies have loved hats. My Mom is an avid knitter and would knit the girls some adorable hats & of course, I would buy them some too.

My favorite was a crocheted strawberry hat. It was too cute for words. Anyhow, I’ve been inspired by all of the latest DIY’ers out there that have been using watermelon for inspiration. This summer I have seen skirts, bags, and picnic baskets all made to look like watermelons. So, I jumped on the band wagon and thought how cute a watermelon hat would be and how much my girls would love them!

Here’s What You Need:

Cotton Bucket Hat
Fabric Dye (Fuschia, Green, and Lime Green)
Plastic Squirt Bottles
Salt
Gloves
Drying Rack
Black Acrylic Paint
Small Paint Brush

Start by purchasing a bucket hat. Measure the circumference of your child’s head to make sure they need a child’s size. Otherwise, you may have to go with the adult size. The child’s size here was 21 and my daughters head measured 20″. This was just perfect for her with plenty of wiggle room. There are many places you can find these bucket hats. Local crafts stores will have them. However, I purchased mine on Ebay.

Prepare the Fabric Dye. Here are a couple of things that I did differently. When preparing the dye, I used only half of the dye amount. You are only making a squirt bottles worth of dye. Therefore, you will not need the entire package of dye. Next add 2 TBS. of salt.

This will help set the dye. You can also use soda ash. I opted for using salt because I didn’t have an soda ash and this works just as well. When you make the dye in the squirt bottle, the directions will tell you to use steaming hot water. I did this for the first bottle and put the lid on the container and shook it up. Little did I know that once I took my finger off the bottle, the cap came flying off and dye was everywhere in my kitchen. Ugh!

So, in order to prevent two clean ups, I mixed the next dye solution with half steam water and half warm water. I went and shook this up outside where I was doing my dying. The second time was much better. Make sure to saturate the entire hat in water and wring it out before you begin dying. This is very important! Otherwise, you will end up with a mess because dry fabric will resist the dye in the beginning.

Start with the lime green dye and dye the hat all the way up the brim where there is a border and stop. Next, take the green dye and dye the brim of the hat. Finish, with the fuchsia on the top of the hat. Try and leave a little area of white. This is a little difficult because the dye will spread and want to flow down because of gravity. Let this stand for a couple of hours.

Wash the hat in warm water with detergent as recommended by the dye instructions. Let this line dry. If the colors aren’t as vibrant as you would like, you can repeat the dying process again. Last step, take a small paint brush with the black acrylic paint and paint the watermelon seeds randomly onto the hat. Note*** Unless you let the hat sit overnight, the colors will turn out pretty light compared to the picture up above where the dye is in the hat. I wanted the hat to be on the lighter side as well. That is why I let it sit for only a couple of hours.

But, as you can see…Lily has a new favorite hat. She loves it so much that she even wears it around the house. I loved how it turned out and it’s so summery looking.