Final Top Hat Design

After doing some big re-thinks on my top-hats designs I came up with new designs and after some contemplation I thought of combining of a few some of them together - and I'm on the verge of being a hypocrite because I wanted to avoid Alice in Wonderland but I just couldn't, it followed me and sucked me in. I'm not completely heartbroken though, since Alice in Wonderland itself is a massive playful fantasy which I personally have enjoyed since I was small up until today - so now where I'm taking this project is now not so much about playing with simple materials that could become anything, but looking at a story and influence that encourages playfulness.

Also the Magician's Rabbit top-hat idea that I had organically intended to do, if I'm honest with you I wasn't all that fussed about dropping it after drawing up these new designs - this was a good thing because you need lots and lots of different ideas when it comes to this sort of design work, and I often just get stuck on one design and don't want to deviate from that particular design, so it was good to get out of that mindset and I got a lot better designs by getting out of it.

Back to the design - So I combined some designs together to get this Red Queen themed design which I was really happy with, black, red and white are if you don't know by now are my go to colours that I am the most comfortable with so I think I could work a lot better in these (isn't funny how the colours of something can change your opinion on something?) 

The back of the design will show the white band of fabric that goes around the bottom of the hat form into big bow at the back and has tails coming from the back - I think using something like organza would be best since it would hold the shape of the bow a lot better. I added some giant pins that stick out from behind the bow which (after looking a lot at Alice in Wonderland and Madhatter hats) are often a common feature - but I think it will be the last thing that I do since I think the design coudl live without it if it came to it.

I stayed with the Harlequin pattern for the body but instead of covering the entire thing in that I designed that the brim of the hat would be covered by netting. I had decided on white but when I coloured the design it looked a little bland so I use a different colour netting or perhaps applique hearts, clubs, spades and diamonds on the netting so it doesn't look as plain - but we will have to see how it looks when I put the netting on.

When staring at the design for a while I thought the top of the hat would look a little bare so I drew a little design of white flowers on top of the hat that could have splashes of red paint on them from when Alice paints the roses red for the Red Queen. I did think about tea-pots etc but that was more of a item of the Madhatter and March Hare etc and not so much the Red Queen which my hat is themed on - but like the pins it will have to be a feature that will have to wait until the rest is finished.

Finally the band on the hat - I've already mentioned its going to be made of organza, but I'm planning on making three playing cards to go in the brim, one is definitely gong to be a Queen of Hearts but I'm unsure about the other two, I did draw them here as a 1 of hearts and diamonds but I could do clubs and spades as well - but there wouldn't be much point in doing much decoration on those two behind the main card because you wouldn't see much of it.

Really happy with this design and glad that unlike in our previous project, I managed to get here with some time left to get on and get this finished - looking forward to making this hat! 

Commence the Hatting!!