Realistically, I should have waited until the video tutorial, but how could I wish such a cool hat? The pattern itself doesn't come with instructions, and like other patterns from Prince Armory Academy, you have to go through some extra steps with Adobe to print it on normal paper and hope you can line it up right, and there are no size options so if you want something different from their default, you have to resize it yourself and hope it works out.

There were a few extra lines on the top part of the hat, and now that I've built it, I realize which ones I wish I had followed, but it wasn't clearly obvious. I would call the pattern beginner friendly with the caveat that riveting the top especially was extremely frustrating, but maybe there are some tricks the video will show that I didn't know to use. Overall, I spent about 14-15 hours on this build, although the bulk of it was extra design work and hopefully the riveting will be quicker next time (that took up about 3 hrs for me, mostly figuring stuff out and operator errors I'm sure. Not used to riveting such 3D objects.)

I would love if PAA would give size options, brief written instructions, and printer-formatted patterns like many other (cheaper) sellers do, but c'est la vie. An option with stitching holes instead of rivets would also be fantastic. I recognize these are pretty easy things to DIY, but for the price of the pattern, I would have hoped it to be more user-friendly. Overall though, it made a beautiful product, and I will be making more of this pattern and others from PAA.

So proud of me 😉 It was a challenge for me. The base offers a lot of possibilities, and the pattern is easy to follow. I use real horse hairs

That pattern is pretty easy to follow even for a complete beginner. I made both styles. And this simple project really got me hooked into leather crafting.