how to make an Einheitsfeldmütze

moses · Post by **moses** » 26 May 2005 22:05

putting the final stitch around the top of the hat. this is a more complicated procedure.

first, go get the cotton top-piece that you cut out a while ago and haven't touched since. pin it to the wool top as shown in top photo.

then, pin the cotton side pieces onto the top, mirroring the wool top/sides. remove the pins from the cotton/wool tops and put them through the cotton sides+cotton top+wool top. that is, you don't want to have pins covered up by layers of fabric, just one set of pins on top. make sure that the raw edges of the cotton pieces that have been stitched together are facing outward. see last 2 photos. you could probably combine this and the above steps, but i do them separately so that the cotton top and cotton sides are all lined up properly to each other.

moses · Post by **moses** » 26 May 2005 22:23

with everything pinned around, and the rear of the cotton sides pinned as seen in the last photo above, now turn the wool inside out. this is actually right side out, as you've been sewing it inside out until now. with the hat right side out, check to make sure that the liner sides and the wool sides more or less fit each other, and one isnt larger or smaller than the other. adjust the pinning of the rear of the cotton sides to make sure everything fits. unpin the rear cotton sides a bit to make room, and sew the rear of the cotton sides together. (just one stitch though, don't topstitch. remember that we don't want any stitches visible inside the hat, only seams) see top photo.

now, what you want to do is kind of a funny thing. with the hat right-side-out, so that your pins are on the inside, you want to add another layer of pins on the outside. describing the spatial relations of this is daunting, so i'll let the photos explain. (bottom 2) you want to pin around the top on the outside and remove the inside pins. note in the photos exactly what layers of fabric the pins are going through and what layers they are NOT going through. note that if you looked on the normal inside of the hat, you wouldnt see any pins at all. you only see the pins when you're looking between the cotton liner and the wool shell. you're going to be sewing a stitch that WILL be visible as a topstitch on the outside of the hat, but will NOT be visible inside the hat. took me quite a while to figure out a procedure for doing this. also note the direction of pins, for ease of sewing. they go around the top of the hat, aiming counter-clockwise.

moses · Post by **moses** » 26 May 2005 22:32

now you sew this stitch. see top 2 photos for the alignment of fabrics on the sewing machine. note that the cotton liner is aimed off to the left, not to the right. there's only a little 1cm flap of the liners that you're sewing through. be careful of the liner while you're sewing, make sure it doesn't stray around under there and get folded up and stitched wrong. another thing to watch out for is that your sewing needle doesnt stray too close to the outer wool seam, as you'll see in the bottom photo. you want your topstitch about 1mm from the seam, but since you're sewing through several layers of crap, its easy to stray too close and you get an uneven looking seam. you want that topstitch nice and even all the way around. i did a rather bad job on this one here, so consider it an example of what not to do. we'll just pretend that this is a very late-war hat when the germans were desperate and cutting corners and all that.

moses · Post by **moses** » 26 May 2005 22:40

now, moving on, we'll attach the flaps to the hat.

pin the flaps to the rear of the hat as seen in top photo. make sure the seam in the flaps lines up with the seam in the rear of the hat. note that the "inside" of the flaps is facing outward here. this is because, if you remember the construction of m43 hats, those flaps are normally folded down to cover up those raw edges you see here. i must have screwed this one up like 5 times in the past and sewed the flaps to the hat the wrong way around, because when you look at it right here, it looks wrong. it's not wrong.

sew it on like that, with the stitch about 1.5cm-2cm in from the edge. more than normal cause its going to be a thick edge and we need more wiggle room.

then, you want to take some scissors and cut the inner layer of wool off, pretty close to the stitch, as seen in the bottom photo. you do this because when you fold the wool under for the final stitching, it would be too thick to sew if both layers of wool were folded there.

Ryan94 · Post by **Ryan94** » 29 May 2005 04:37

Also attached the brim?

(In my opinion this is one of the harder parts, but maybe it's just my imagination...

Ryan94 · Post by **Ryan94** » 29 May 2005 04:53

Oh, and a short tip related to the "faux" stitch in the brim/bill...
Only some M43 cardboards were attached to the underside of the brim with a stitch, but not all... so, why don't you just leave it away?? (I can send you photos with M43 caps without a stitch at the underside of the brim, if you don't belive me...

)

And I believe the authentic way to se those, is to to attach the cardboard with underside of the bill as first step, then sew on the upper side of the bill and at last you evert the upper bill side... but that's actually pretty hard to make, because those carbaords often "brakes" then in the middle, and I still haven't figure out how the "authentic"/correct of doing it...

But that's just a suggestion.

/David

moses · Post by **moses** » 30 May 2005 14:45

yeah that's the thing, with the cardboard i'm using, you can't sew it to the board and then turn it inside out, it'll just rip the board up

i probably should have mentioned at the start that i based this pattern on a repro hat i got from ATF rather than an original (i'm poor, its the best i could do) so i may have some compounded inaccuracies there
the bill of their hat seems to have the board stitched to the wool, but i suppose it could just be glued or something, who knows

hopefully i'll get a little more posted here later today

moses · Post by **moses** » 31 May 2005 11:47

sewing the insignia:

even though i've done it like 6 times this way now, it just occurred to me that it would be a lot wiser if i moved this step to BEFORE the wool sides are sewn to the wool top. the insignia needs to be pretty close to the top of the hat, and after sewing those wool pieces together, there's a big thick wad of fabric that gets in the way of sewing the insignia on, which is itself a rather delicate thing to stitch.

however, too late for that here, so on to the sewing.

i've seen photos showing several different ways of getting the insignia sewn on, but this seemed like the most reasonable and common way, when using the type of insignia seen on the left in the earlier pic in this thread. i forget the name of it, is it "BeVo"? experts out there, please yell at me if i'm wrong about this method of stitching.

first, switch your threads to a greener type which more closely matches the color of the insignia backing.
pin the top of the insignia on facing the wrong way to the outer wool and not through the cotton liner.
pin it on as close as you can comfortably get to the top of the hat (probably a little under 1cm from the topstitch) as seen in the top photo attached. sew the top in place there. remember, not through the cotton liner, just the wool.

then fold it down and trim the sides of it to about 1cm in width as seen in the middle photo, and fold them under. fold them pretty close, don't leave a lot of edge showing. stitch them down like that. the way i did it here, to make it easier on me, was to do two stitches, one starting at the bottom and going up the left side, and then another starting at the top right and going down to the bottom and overlapping the first stitch a bit. final result seen in bottom photo.

variation: there are a few different types of insignia, you've noticed, like the 2 shown at the beginning of this howto, and also the T-shaped ones of the same design as the one i'm using here. there are also a lot of different ways to sew them on, apparently, such as sewing a zigzag stitch which straddles the edge of the insignia backing, and hand-stitching them on in various styles.

moses · Post by **moses** » 31 May 2005 11:57

deleted this post in favor of the next one which explains more.

pzrwest · Post by **pzrwest** » 10 Jun 2005 19:02

when will the next installment be? great so far

moses · Post by **moses** » 11 Jun 2005 07:48

sorry, soon

i've been making 28cm turrets for my scharnhorst model
i have no discipline, i go back and forth between several projects
i should be getting this tutorial back on track within a couple days

pzrwest · Post by **pzrwest** » 11 Jun 2005 12:25

Ah a fellow modeler! I'm more into german armor and aircraft. My 2 favorites are 109's and fw's

Newton30 · Post by **Newton30** » 13 Jun 2005 01:25

Hi Moses,

Which would be the length of pattern flap?

Best regards,
Newton

Ryan94 · Post by **Ryan94** » 13 Jun 2005 03:04

Hi, one more addition to the brim/visor of the field cap... it just crossed my mind how about using fusible interfacing at both sides of the brim. Shouldn't that have the same effect as cardboard? It just should be a bit more easey to attach it to the field cap then... (I hope you udnerstand what I mean.

)

I'm gonna test it in a few weeks, when I start making my grey wool M44 uniform, (ya' know, 'wool brothers'

) then I will test it out with two layers of fusible interfacing in thebrim/visor? (is the correct synonym for it 'brim' or 'visor' at a field cap?)

Best regards, David

moses · Post by **moses** » 13 Jun 2005 20:12

ryan: visor/brim/bill, yeah
i'm not quite sure what you mean about the interfacing, but i'm interested in anything you're testing out

newton: also not quite sure what length you're asking for, but you should be able to tell the size of all the parts from my patterns in the .zip in the first post

ok, moving on...

pinning the bill to the outer top.
first, get your paper pattern for the bill, and use it to find the center lines of the bill, as seen in the top attached photo. then mark it somehow. i usually do it with one pin as you can see in the pic. then use that center line marker to align the bill to the center seam on the front of the hat, and pin em together as seen in the middle pic. remember that the topstitch on the bill faces DOWN. also note in the pic how far up the hat to pin the bill. you want the inner edge of wool to stick out a bit, about 1cm.

then sew these together (don't sew the liner) here, but put the stitch a little farther out than your pins. you should be able to sew the thing without removing any of the pins, but whether you do or don't remove the pins while sewing is up to you. the point being that you don't want to put this stitch right up against the cardboard edge in the bill, you want to leave a little room for our final stitch later on. also, do NOT stitch all the way to the end of the bill's wool. these pointy ends will be folded further under than the rest, and it'll screw that up if you stitch it all the way out there. just get it to about 2cm from that topstitch on the bottom of the outer bill.

see bottom pic for the final result.