Rhiannon's Steampunk Hat

Rhiannon wanted a mini top hat for a steampunk hen's night, in black and white, that might be appropriate for general Victorian costume later (not necessarily historically accurate, but not so steampunky that it would look weird).

I only took one progress pic, to check with Rhi if she liked the shape:

And here it is (almost) finished (sorry for the couch photos!):

There are lots of faults that drive me crazy but overall I like the look of it. And it was all made from stash. Yay stash!

Rhi is going to embroider something along the stitching line of the gathered facing. Normally I would add some kind of trim there but didn't have anything suitable, so we are going to COMBINE OUR POWERS instead. Which I'm sure will magically improve the result.

Some of my thoughts regarding this hat:

• I thought the velvet would be a pain to work with (because I usually have found that it is) but one benefit was that it hid the stitches well. They just sunk into the pile and disappeared. Yay!
• The black and white combo looks nice but every bit of shed fluff from one shows up on the other!
• I dislike buttonholes. My machine had a fit about one of them and I messed up another one, and then the buttons we chose were bigger than expected and hid some of them anyway! Grrr. And they messed up my even edge.
• This is the second mini top hat I've done with a curved brim and the first with a point at the front. I like the look of both, and they are easy enough to achieve. For the curved brim I added extra width to the brim pattern piece so that it is more like a circle than an ellipse. For the point I didn't change the pattern at all, just shaped it that way after wiring.