And it worked!

At the end of a long day, the hair is coming loose and everything is looking pretty ragged, but here's what I came up with late last night.  I wore it to Coronation in the Kingdom of Atenveldt (Arizona), and it stayed put perfectly.  There is a 4-5" wide, wire comb inside the front edge, pointing towards the back inside the band and it never slipped a bit.  The bun I made seemed a bit too low at first, but I had to work the band around the bun, and then the bun seemed to help hold the band in place too.

Construction was pretty simple - a 3" wide band of buckrum, the length needed for the desired circumference.  I folded it in half lengthwise, then wired both edges with millinery wire.  Covered it with a strip of brocade, with the raw edges just floating loose inside.  The brocade was machine stitched onto the band.  The gold fabric I pinned and fitted to the band, so that it is smooth on the top and sides, with some tucks across the bottom, to form the little bit of snood-like bagging.  There is one row of pearls stitched in place right against the gold, and another will be added on the front edge.  

I started this around 7:30 last night, and finished hand-stitching the one row of pearls around 11pm.  That time period did include a trip to the fabric store to get the brocade.  I'm very happy with how it turned out, and am going to experiment with some variations, now that I have some ideas about how to proceed,  

These pictures aren't great, but then, I did have to do the point-the-camera-at-yourself trick.