Rhiannon's hat - the final stage

As Tanith mentioned in this post on the victorian/steampunk mini-top hat, she handed it over to me in an almost complete state. All that was needed was to do something to cover the working stitches on the lining of the brim. Usually she'd use a trim – perhaps a braid – but not only was there nothing in her stash that looked quite right, we wanted to give me a chance to contribute to the hat. This was important to me, as I often feel that she's being so generous making me these amazing hats and I'm not really helping at all!

So it was decided that I'd cover the stitches with a line of embroidery. I settled on oyster chain stitch, for two reasons. It looks nice both in a straight line and on a slight zig-zag, so I knew it would look fine if it had to deviate a little to properly cover the working stitches. I also like the way it gives an effect almost like a string of tiny beads.

Oyster chain isn't a difficult stitch. It starts with a twisted chain stitch (figure 1), then the needle passes under the top of the stitch (figure 2) so the thread lies snugly up along the side of the twisted chain. Then a loop stitch is made around this, with the needle going in at a and coming out at b. The end stitch should look something like figure 3 except more snug – it is hard to draw what it should look like where the threads should lie next to each other just using a solid line, sorry – and the thread is now ready to start the next twisted chain. My illustrations aren't the most sophisticated or clear, I'm afraid, but I hope you get the gist.

oyster stitch instructions

In this picture, I'm in the middle of doing the twisted chain.

And here is the final result!

I'm quite happy with the way it looks. I did the stitching in two strands of black embroidery cotton, and was worried that it wouldn't be a strong enough visual line, but now I'm glad I didn't use more threads or a thicker perle thread.

It made a beautiful crowning touch to the outfit – the full effect of the hat is destroyed by the fact that I'm squinting down to get the sun out of my eyes in this photo, but all the photos taken at the actual event are very dark and the hat is obscured.

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.