CALLING ALL KNITTERS AND CROCHETERS

Back to School Shop provides low income elementary school children in Stamford with brand new school clothes and supplies each year before the start of school. One of the popular items for the children is handmade winter hats. So if you are a knitter or a crocheter who is looking for a project, we would love to have your help!  We hope to serve 400 children at our event this summer—that’s a lot of knitting and crocheting!

Here are a few guidelines based on our past experience:

  1. We are looking for hats ONLY this year. (NO SCARVES OR HEADBANDS PLEASE.) The children aren’t drawn to them, so please put your energy towards the hats.)

  2. The most popular colors for the children are generally blues, reds, pinks, purples, greens, black, gray, etc. (Think “child friendly” colors!)

  3. Pompoms are in! If the hat that you make looks like it would look good with a pompom, and you are able, please consider putting one on.

  4. Soft, washable wools or acrylics are preferred-cotton yarn doesn’t work well.

  5. We need sizes for age 5 and up. A Child Size will fit most of our children, but we’ll need a few Adult Sizes too, for some of the older children. The hat should be approximately 7-9 inches from the bottom edge to the top (where a pompom would be) in order to keep those little ears warm. Or in “knitting language”, hats should be knitted to 7-8 inches (depending on the pattern) from the cast on edge to the beginning of the crown shaping.

Included in this document are links to some simple, free hat patterns that can be downloaded from Ravelry (www.ravelry.com). Ravelry is the largest online site for patterns and all things knit and crochet related. It’s free to join and easy to navigate. You can certainly search for more patterns or use your own favorites. This is just provided as a resource for our knitters and crocheters.

Hat donations should be sent to:

Back to School Shop
1127 High Ridge Rd.  #232
Stamford, CT  06905

If you prefer to arrange for drop-off of hats rather than mailing them or if you have any questions, please reach out to Back to School Shop at volunteers.backtoschoolshop@gmail.com 

Please arrange for hats to arrive no later than 7/1/24

Thank you so much!!!

HAT PATTERNS FROM RAVELRY.COM

Knitting Hat Patterns

Crochet Hat Patterns

Happy Knitting and Crocheting!!!