1701 Tuque

This was the third tuque I made from my recently designed and fitted one piece double layered tuque pattern shown below. The ability to put something larger than a panel on the tuque is why you’d want to really use this pattern, as well as better durability, compared to the multiple panel patterns you usually find out there. Here, I grabbed some portraits of The Original Series Star Trek Enterprise crew from a cotton print, and appliquéd them onto the flat fleece before sewing together to form a shaped tuque.

5 panel, 1 piece, double layer tuque pattern

As you can see by the pattern at left, the fleece is completely flat to start with. You just draw a horizontal line halfway down in the piece to get your brim edge and make sure whatever you put on it doesn’t cross, or come too close to it. Allow a bit for seam allowance on the curved pointy parts, too, but 1/4 inch was all I needed, not the typical 5/8 inch.

For my head size, if I had used individual panels, they would not have been big enough for most of the portraits on the finished tuque shown at top. I could have done a four paneled tuque, like the DENVER tuque blogged about yesterday, to have bigger panels that could accommodate the biggest of the portraits. However, I would have had to leave off one of the five crew members for which I had portraits. It was already too bad Chekov didn’t check off the box to let them use his character on the print, which I could have squeezed in if it were similar in size to the rest. I didn’t have to leave out another character.

And for those who didn’t get the 1701 name reference, it is the hull number of the original Star Trek series starship Enterprise, whose crew members are featured on the tuque. I’ve used various Star Trek names for garments already, so this was fitting in that it also identified the specific association of the Enterprise crew featured.

Gold rating

This tuque was another gold rating piece from my perspective. I am going to LOVE wearing this thing so much it’s going to be my motivation to get outside some rotten winter days, just to be able to show it off to people I pass by on my travels! It’s very striking and memorable in appearance. It says lots of important things about me, just as my love for Star Trek, my creativity and skills, maybe even a little bit of exhibitionism! It’s extremely warm being double layered, and durable with two lines of stitching on every seam, including appliqué stitching so they won’t be ripping any time soon. Black is also practical to not feel dirty if I sweat in it. Really, what more can one want from a tuque?

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