mad world: How to Make a Luigi Hat!

So, I decided I wanted to make a hat for my brother to wear so he could be Luigi for something we're doing with our friends. I couldn't find the sort of floppy hat I wanted (not for under $20, and for something he's only going to wear once, I didn't want to spend that much!) so I snagged a green baseball cap from Goodwill for $3.99. It was a brand new John Deere cap, and since I'm no stranger to removing embroidery I figured it wouldn't be a huge deal to remove it.

Then it was off to Hobby Lobby for some green and white felt (1/8th yard each, at $.79) and some Exacto blades ($2.49) so I could cut it.

Here, you can see my main materials all lined up. I wasn't too concerned with being careful when I removed the embroidery underneath what would be the patch, so you can see where I poked through a couple of times. You can ALSO see where I haven't removed the embroidery off the side, but I'll get to that later.

So, here's my white felt with my "stencil." I looked at a bunch of pictures of Luigi and figured out roughly what the size of it needed to be so it was proportional to the person who would be wearing the hat. Or at least their face. I found something that looked about right, and then cut around it with the Exacto blades.

Here you can see how I've gone and cut out my circle. It's obviously a little raggedy, so I'm going to trim it thusly:

Nice and neat!

I used a nail file to make the 'L' for the emblem. It was wide enough to cover the amount of white I needed so it didn't look lame, and was what I had available. I'll leave it to you to guess which reason was the real one.