After getting the sections of the coronet put together, I tried it on and found that it was just a little too big. This was about what I expected, and I was just glad that it hadn’t turned out too small. I attempted to incorporate some padding when I sewed the leather binding on the bottom edge, but that turned out to be too fiddly to accomplish. Instead, I left the leather band unpadded and built a padded bolster out of cotton quilt batting covered in blue linen.

The bottom edge of the bolster is sewn around a piece of cotton rope, to form a shelf for the bottom edge of the coronet to sit on.

It’s still a bit fiddly to get it on, since the bolster is not attached, but once in place it is very stable.

Traditionally, baronial coronets are decorated with pearls or other “spheroid” decoration.  I decided to modify a method I’d seen used to mount pearls on another coronet to add blue glass beads on ours. I started with the beads, some small brass tubing, and some head pins.

I had intended to have the bead sit on top of the tubing, held in place by the pin, but as it turned out the tubing actually fit perfectly inside the hole in the bead.

The pin was still needed to keep the bead from slipping off, so I inserted the pin with a tiny bit of E6000 to keep it in place.

Rather than relying on my questionable soldering skills, I used more E6000 to mount each bead on the back side of the coronet points.

Recently the Baron and Baroness of South Downs announced they were planning to step down in the fall. Adela and I put our names in the running to succeed them, and we were the only ones to do so. While waiting for the actual polling and appointment to happen, I decided to take a statistically reasonable gamble and make us a pair of coronets.

The first thing I needed to do was figure out the design I wanted. Considering the tools and skills I had at my disposal, my first thought was to build them out of hinged sections. I like the look of flared coronets, so I needed to work out how to get the shape I wanted. I did some math and came up with an Excel spreadsheet that would do the calculations for me. Once I had the basic geometry of the sections worked out, I printed out a paper version to see how it would fit.

I cut the sections out of 0.032″ brass that I found at Hobby Lobby (I ordered 0.025″ brass for Adela’s on Amazon). I quickly realized that my initial plan to make hinges on the ends of my sections was really going to be more trouble than it was worth. Instead, I changed gears and decided to connect the sections with small plates and brass rivets. The final design can be seen here.

Rather than try to make a rolled edge on the bottom of the coronet, I drilled a series of small holes along the bottom edge of each plate and sewed on a strip of pigskin.

Sections cut and drilled

Brackets drilled and decorated

Brackets cut to shape