10 Years to Finish a Regency Reticule? Well, Yes

A Christmas gift? No, a Christmastime project.

Sometime in 2014, during the lilac-colored silk phase in which I made an embroidered 1790s sleeveless spencer, matching outer petticoat, and pearled headband after an original, I started a beaded reticule project. It stalled and was picked up and dropped again during the following decade, and only now have I finished it. During that time I went through several phones and it appears photos documenting the project's early days have gone missing, so the following is a somewhat truncated history of its making.

First, Why the Lack of Posts for So Long?

It's not for lack of making things, for I did manage a pair of 1790s stays, a velveteen spencer, and a pretty apron-front dress. Those projects, though, happened in short spurts that felt like shelter from repeated storms. There was another health situation, one in the long series that have punctuated the last 30 years, and then, the illness and passing of my darling and beloved father, followed months later by my sweet aunt. Last spring saw my sisters and I sharing taking 24-hour care of our daddy during his time in hospice and helping our stepmother/mother through, and then, the loss, the mourning... Losing a parent is a loss apart; it shakes the foundations. It's still too close for elegy, except to say that his community lost a dedicated volunteer and leader and we lost a mentor, a guide, a loving father and friend. Even now I can hear his voice.

The Finished Reticule

Nuts, I don't want to write again, but, he thought hobbies were key to mind and soul, so, let's go. Here is the completed reticule. It measures 9 inches at its widest by 9 inches tall and a measly 1.25 inches deep. It's deep enough to hold a small fan, a handkerchief, smelling salts and a phone. I suppose it's possible that you'd find lip gloss and some cash, too, were you to snoop. I wanted it big enough to be useful, but not big enough to become lumpy with the thinggummies that naturally accumulate in my own purse, for practicality and so I have the satisfaction of pulling out whatever's needed like a rabbit out of a hat when my sons or husband ask. Package of band aids, mini containers of sunscreen, lotion, and hand sanitizer, a pen, sunglasses, a scrap of paper for writing, a tiny measuring tape, lactose pills for the lactose-intolerant son, emergency migraine tablet, tissues, keys...all in the smallest package I can manage. Query: did Regency women do similarly? Were smelling salts part of a reticule's community of objects?

The front, natch

The back and the compound strap

The narrower-than-wanted interior

The reticule has stiff sides, courtesy interior cardboard on back and front, softened with millinery domette so that the surface doesn't feel harsh.

Intermission for Kitty Cuteness

"Why are you putting that thing on top of me?" asked Nutmeg,
who was on my lap.

How It Was Made

The shape is fairly common for the Regency period, interesting visually because most sides are at oblique angles. I saw an example in 2014 with similar beading and loved it. The photo once lost, I never found it or was able to track it down online again. Then, a year or so ago, one so like the original turned up in a favorite Etsy shop (GraceofTime) that it was quick like a bunny -- save the photo! Here it is.

Reticule from Graceof Time on Etsy: their photo

This reticule I think is padded, and soft-sided, and seems mostly to be beaded in white and silver, and the fabric may be a satin. Still, you see the resemblance.

I wanted flat sides as my other reticule gets so shapeless and lumpy when anything is put inside, plus the tailored look is attractive. Dangling beads were not to be thought of; a klutz, I'd catch a loop on something for sure and beads would fly.

The construction is invented because I'd no access to originals. It uses stitches common in the Regency period: back-stitching for strength, whipping of seams, hemming.

Materials

• Exterior fabric: home-dyed silk shantung from Dharma Trading
• Interior fabric: undyed silk shantung, ditto
• Stiffener: cardboard from a discarded cereal box
• Soft interlining: domette, I think from Judith M millinery in Shelbyville, KY
• Beads: pearl seed beads, gold-interior clear sead beads: the color isn't warm
• Embroidery silk: Au Ver a Soie silk ovale, a flat, untwisted filament silk (not spun and a joy to use)
• Sewing thread: vintage British sewing silk in Heliotrope
• Strap: tawny silk cord and silk tassels from a deconstructed remnant of antique passementerie whose connecting threads had shattered, from DuchessTrading on Etsy. The passementerie was too far gone to edge a gorgeous pillow, so...creative reuse.

The Beading

I drew the design on paper, then copied it on the home-dyed silk shantung. The fabric was tightened in an embroidery hoop: this sort of work cannot be easily done on fabric that isn't taut. Then I sewed the stems in elongated chain stitch.

Each beaded twig or frond was made in one go, by pulling the thread up through the fabric, loading the thread with the requisite number of beads, laying it flat, and running the needle back into the fabric. Then, with a second needle, couching down the longer threads every few beads as invisibly as possible. Otherwise, they became droopy and at risk of being pulled off.

The Assembly and Sewing

After beading the fabric, I sketched and cut out pattern shapes for the back, which included the foldover flap, and the front, which included an extra piece at the bottom to make the bottom a little deep, front to back. You know, for stuffing stuff into the purse. It's likely I cut out more than one pattern, to see which size felt most natural and useful.

Once happy with the pattern, the fashion fabric and lining were cut out, using generous 1-inch seam allowances.

I used a leftover breakfast cereal box, which is a single layer of cardboard, not terribly heavy, to cut a back (minus the foldover flap) and a front.

Lastly, I cut millinery domette according to the pattern pieces as a nice soft interlining to make the purse feel good to hold.

The lining for front and back were laid flat, the carboard laid atop, then the domette went on that, and the fashion fabric over all. The layers were pinned and basted securely in red thread so that I could easily see it to pull it out later.

You can see the three layers in the flap: fashion fabric, domette, lining. 

At this point there was a great deal of dithering and it's likely that the dithering precipitated one of the laying-aside periods. I had thought I was going to simply sew the front and back together. However, alert readers will envision me trying to reach into the reticule and finding it hard to insert more than a slip of paper, even with that excess bit at the bottom that was supposed to offer some room. Those hard sides didn't give. No room, no room at all! I'd need to add sides...

Eventually I determined to cut probably 2-inch wide pieces (1/2-inch seam allowance) to insert between front and back. At this remove I can't figure out what made me cut separate pieces for the long sides and the short sides, but that's what happened.

To seam the sides to the front and back, I chose to turn the seam allowances inward of all fabric pieces and whip them together with very close stitches, about 1/8 inch apart. This makes the seam stand in a little ridge, with little fabric bumps between each stitch that echo the beading. It's also good and strong. It does mean, however, that the interior lining has raw edges. The silk doesn't fray much at all, so am not concerned about that. I probably should have seamed up the lining separately and slipped it in, though...

Seaming together front and back. You can see the
side pieces have been whipped on to the front.

The fashion fabric, domette, and lining for the flap were laid together, then the fashion fabric seam allowance was turned in over the domette and basted. 

The strap, which is made up one long piece of cord folded into the three, was laid across the flap at the spot where it folds over from the back piece, and on top of the domette. The lining seam allowances were turned in, just a hair inside the fashion fabric so that it wouldn't show on the outside and laid atop. More basting to hold everything smooth. Puckering would have been fatal. That's too dramatic, of course, but by now it was at the end of 2023 and I didn't want to end on a whimper. The lining was carefully hemmed to the fashion fabric.

All that was left was to turn in the edges of the sides at the reticule's opening and hem them, though I did have to do a bit more seam whipping at the opening, since I winged (wung? Oh, those irregular verbs) the strap at the last minute. It had taken a year or two to find, hunting on and off, the right strap. I couldn't find any thick silk cord that was remotely affordable in the right color, found the artificial silk cords too bright and slick and shiny to work with the nearly matte shantung, and just didn't want ribbon.

Is a tasseled strap appropriate? Yes, but I've never seen a reticule strap so loaded with them. But, they're in the spirit of the 1790s: out-and-out luxury, outre attitudes, and caution to the winds.

So there it is. My only concern? The cardboard interior is just cereal box. If that's made of wood cellulose, which is likely, it may break down over time. With care, the rest is good for ages and ages.

All in all, this was a good project. Contained, full of challenges and design puzzles. I'd should have made the sides a little wider, and that cardboard should have been archival pasteboard, but that's small stuff. Here's to having a fun, fluffy, shiny reticule to carry.

Today I leave you with a little cat TV. Ciao until next we meet!

Hippy-Hooray! A Pair of Hip Pads to Attach Directly to the Stays

Completed hip pads pinned to stays.

It's not too easy to find extant hip pads, those second and third quarter of the eighteenth century tubelike or boxy protuberances worn over the stays to give the hips, and the skirts over them, a little extra oomph and ooh là là. Some mantua makers sell them, such as the Village Green Clothier, and some reenactors have made them, including a pair recently made by Kitty Calash. Among costumers, the larger pannier, made with cane or boning, are quite popular and create a dramatic hip line.

The circa 1770 English gown I am making is designed for fairly relaxed, informal day wear, so while I made a pair of panniers some years ago, methought semi-dramatic hips were more in order than gargantuan basket hips. Sarah Jane Meister, from whom I purchased my stays, sweetly sent the remnant of pink linen that the stays were covered with, so I took that and designed a pair of hip pads.

Historical Hip Pads

Many of you may already be familiar with the Boston Museum of Fine Art's banana-bright pads, complete with their original, worn strings. They were my immediate inspiration, and it would have been fun to have made them with yellow chintz, 'cept I didn't have any of that.

I was also a little leery of strings and more strings around the waist:

• 1 pair of pads
• 1 decency petticoat
• 2 regular under petticoats
• 1 outer petticoat

equals five sets of tapes, equals extra inches and a nearly sure rat's nest of knots.

Hip rolls. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 43.1275a,b.

Though guess what? The tape ties are made of wool!  Ha, ha! Evidence that I can use my handspun wool on the tape loom to make narrow tape ties as needed.

Anyhow, the excess string business. What to do about it? Then I found the stays below in the Met's collection, and lo, there were hip pads attached to them already, sans strings. Wish answered.

Stays, 1750-75, European. C.I.39.13.206a, b, Met.

Stays, third quarter of the eighteenth century. Probably Spanish. C.I.39.13.211. Met.

Do you see the pretty remnant of block-printed fabric used to create the European pads? What fun, what good use of scraps.

I've peered and peered at these images, and believe that they are tacked to the stays with thread. The dimples in the pad fabric lead me to believe that. Something else to notice: these pads are not exactly works of art. The pads on the Spanish stays are compact and nicely shaped, a bit like kidney beans. The European pads are apparently rectangles of fabric stuffed, and none too neatly. These were purely utilitarian addenda to the human shape :}

The Hip Pads, Drafted

My cues for shape are the MFA pads. Because the pads form a crescent, it seemed to me that the skirts would like more neatly and naturally on them than on sudden squarish bumps.  Here's how I did them.

A blog post about the making of a farthingale roll, I think, gave me the needed tip. Sure wish I had written down or remembered the maker in order to give them credit!

First, the stays were donned, and the waist measured. Then I laid out the measuring tape in a waist-like ring on a piece of paper, and sketched in the rough shape of my waist in stays. Then I drew in a pad shape on one side of the "waistline". I estimated the Boston pads at about three inches wide at their widest. Drawing the shape into a crescent was easy: you can see that it's rather natural to do this given the shape of the waist.

Next, I cut out the pad shape with scissors.

It was folded in half and the shape evened out so that both ends matched.

Fascinating, eh?

Next, using the cut-out as a template, I draw around its edges on a fresh piece of paper. I added one inch all around to account for the depth -- the thickness -- of the resulting pad.


Then I added another one inch all around for a seam allowance. The wide seam allowance gave me lots of room to tweak the shape and thickness of the pads if needed.

There, the pattern was finished.

The Hip Pads Take Shape

The rest is pretty straightforward. Following the pattern, four pieces were cut out of the pink linen.

I sewed up each pad with linen thread, leaving a little hole in each for turning them right side out and stuffing them. The boys' toy car is in the photo for kicks and giggles.

The pads are stuffed with alpaca, which is all I have at the moment. The stuffing is not crammed in, so that at some point the alpaca can be spun...the stuffing would then become down from one of our very old, ready-to-be-retired pillows.
The Final Pads

Here they are, pinned to the stays:

A rather fun little project. Straightforward and unfussy.

Next, a plain, narrow decency petticoat to wear just above the stays.  Before I leave you, a little boy and kitty silliness. Christopher rests his head on Muffin, all soft and warm, and reads as she  naps. Bliss for both.



Ciao!

A Regency Picnic and Testing Out the Embroidered Sleeveless Spencer

Last Saturday some of our little sewing group/tea society met at Waveland Estate at the edge of town for a Regency-themed picnic.

It was a morning of mixed promise, hazy blue skies and sunshine in one direction, and a cobalt blue enhanced with gray in the other. Rainstorm, I thought, that's what that is, rain in the making.

Sure enough, mountains of clouds moved somewhat overhead, pinches of blue above their enormous lumpy sides, but they just spat sprinkles on us while we lingered over the picnic. Jane remarked that we wouldn't melt, so there was no mad pick-up and dash for safety. I had forgotten, of course, about how my sleeveless spencer and water don't mix, so it's lucky the sprinkles were scant because while I might not dissolve into a puddle, the spencer surely would have been ruined.

Oh, how we feasted. We paid as much attention as we could to creating the atmosphere: luncheon dishes and teacups and wineglasses, and a block print tablecloth for a colorful background like the skirts of an early Regency dress.

Then there was the food...oh, the food. Why did such dishes ever lose their way in history, and become lost and foreign?

Autumn Jane, and Jane, as we set up for the picnic. Do you see the lovely raised pie in the center? That's Jenni's
onion pye.

Chicken pudding, onion pye (with potato and apple), Salmagundi, a solid whip't syllabub, lavender cheesecake, good bread with Seville orange marmalade, tea piping hot -- Maryanne's Wild Abandon (Bingley's Teas) and Jasmine Darjeeling (Montea), real honest-to-goodness Mount Rainier cherries.

Salmagundi: a composed salad with the scents of lemon and herbs.

Whip't syllabub: light, cold, and creamy all at once.

All eaten to the tune of a breeze and birdsong and lots and lots of conversation and chatter, under welcoming old trees and the shadow of Waveland. We sat so long that plans to tour the home were tossed aside, so we strolled around the grounds and gardens.

Polly identifying flowers. The garden is maintained by a garden club my mother's a member of.
They use lots of native and heirloom species, drought resistant, perennial.

Polly and Autumn Jane consider the afternoon.

Jenni and Autumn on the estate's massive portico.

Jenni wrote about the picnic too: she has much better picnic pictures, since my camera chose to hiccup and then go dead. That's also why she and Laura are not in any of the pictures just yet.

So How Did the Spencer and Ensemble Do? Fine, with a Tweak or Two

This was the spencer's first step into the world, a beta test to see how it, and the rest of the ensemble, performed. Now refinements can be made for the Jane Austen Festival in July.

On the portico. Perhaps the bodice mixed with white and the end of the bandeau flying,
but this picture reminds me of some Eastern European dress.
I suspect those massive columns are brick underneath, stuccoed. They are
magnificent, aren't they? The steps are native limestone, worn with rain and feet.

The spencer itself turned out to be comfortable. Yes, it's another layer over the dress -- two, counting the lining -- so perhaps it was a little warmer than I anticipated. However, the natural fabrics did what they were supposed to: they wicked away the ladylike "glow", leaving me, if not cool, at least upright. Despite years in Atlanta's jungle-like humidity, I've always wilted in the heat, so knowing if I can even stand the garment on a hot day is useful information.

The spencer, laced. Nice sneaker laces, eh?

Once laced, the spencer front lies smoothly, without wrinkles. Oh, how I love the
spangles twinkling as the spencer moves.

The spencer's interior lacing worked beautifully to set the garment in place. It didn't shift and wrinkles were minimal and natural. The fronts are pinned from inside. I do need three pins, top, middle, and bottom...this wearing I only had two, and the middle of the overlapped front pulls a little.

The back is where I am concerned. Remember how the back is lower than originally designed, and how I built up a high ruche to mitigate this? Well, not high enough. Plus, my chemise is showing. Our house has no full-length mirror, if you don't count the 1920s mirror set into a door that's so de-silvered the view is obscured with dots and splots and scratches. Therefore, I left the house gaily unaware. The solution? Add a ruffle to the dress neckline, to match that on the hem. It will fluff over the ruche, obscure any wardrobe malfunctions, and in the front provide some welcome screening.

Plus, the ruche bows out a little in back. I will take two tiny pleats in the top of the back to pull it all inward.

Bowing on the back ruche, peekaboo chemise, but still a pleasant, fresh effect.

Oh, one last note. It's impossible to tie arm ribbons onesself. I've tried it. Many times. So we tied them at the picnic, and I failed to notice that the sleeves are poofed out shorter in back than in front. They should be the reverse with longer ends in the back, to get the nicest drape. A memo to file for the festival: examine your sleeves! I was just going to say, "Can you imagine all the items a woman would have to think about before stepping outside?" Then I remembered that I check for bra strap peekaboo, skirt hang, zipper condition, muffin top, hair muss, and make-up smear before I go outside today. Different era, same concern.

Now, About That Hair, Missie...It Was Supposed to Be Curly, Not Mussy! Tsk, Tsk

All my livelong life, I've warred with my curls. For decades, I endured frizzhead, bobble-curl, and the electric-socket look. Until the Flatiron Age. Now I sport straight hair with flipped ends. Ahhh.

Now, here I was trying to make the hair hold ringlets, especially in front and it did...but only in the back. Even the humid air didn't help. It wasn't the beach humidity that creates Greek ringlets, just Kentucky humidity that pulls individual hairs into a Mrs. Frizzle bob. Fine for 1780s, not for 1794-6.

Yes, I hear you, and no, I didn't put Lottabody on it, that fantastic setting lotion. I reserved that for the artificial pin-in curls that I tried that morning, and gave up on because they looked flat ridiculous. Hrrmph.

So we had that morning hair au naturel, with a silk gauze bandeau. Cute, but not the Master plan.

So, between now and the festival, it's hair play time! We'll set it with Lottabody in foam curlers, we'll test the famous papillote curls, we'll "turn up" chignons at the ends per Gallery of Fashion, and we'll twist and tie turbans a la Festive Attyre (thank you!) until we have something a little more of the date. I'm looking forward to this.

Embroidered Sleeveless Spencer: Finished at Last!

Pinch yourselves all you want, but it remains real: I am truly done with the sleeveless spencer. The first post, Spenceration, is dated October 26, 2011. Well, well.

So how does it look? Here are the first shots, after I completed the last stitches at Noah's table by his sunny windows. I am pretty happy with it.

The sleeveless spencer from the front. It closes inside via stays-style lacing, and pins shut on the exterior. When wearing it, I'll use plain straight pins top and bottom and hide them as much as possible in the fabric.

As you know, the spencer is made of light purple silk shantung that I dyed myself. I embroidered it in flat silk (Soie Ovale from Au Ver a Soie), all-silk chenille from Hand Dyed Fibers, real 4 mm gold plate spangles, and real 2 mm gold plate spangles. The top-stitching and point a rabattre sous la main hemming work is done in Au Ver a Soie, gold color. The ruche is tacked down in French blue flat silk, the closest I could come to the purple with the threads I have. The stitches barely show at all, as I hoped.

Inside, the spencer is lined in white linen, with lacing pieces in a heavier linen. Part of the seams are sewn in Gutermann cotton thread (because I forgot to use linen), and the rest in natural linen thread left over from a stays project.

Christopher was excited about the finish, too.

Noah and Christopher show off the back of the spencer. Yes, the ruche on the back is incrementally wider than the ruche on the front. Ruches could be shaped, and I thought this looked extra nice, besides raising the back neckline a bit. More on the reason for that anon.

The Finishing Touches

Front Closure

Following a Swedish or Danish example, which I can no longer find, the spencer actually closes by lacing together two interior panels whipped to the lining. The original was a dress; the two flaps underneath, so common in early Regency dresses, laced shut rather than pinned shut.

I cut a rectangle of heavy-ish linen, hemmed three sides, and turned a wide hem on the fourth. Then I added a row of eyelet holes. Finally I attached it to the spencer lining; it's attached on the end closest to the spencer's side seam, and on the top and bottom up to the wide hem. That should hold it flat, without pulling, and leaves a flap with the eyelets for lacing. The flap's mate is on the other front piece of the spencer.

I decided that I wanted the close fit the lacing allows; the idea is that it should take the strain off the pins used to shut the garment itself and produce a smoother line, sans many horizontal wrinkles. My Metropolitan Museum inspiration garment laces shut, too. I decided that on my spencer, the lacing would complicate the visual impact of the spencer, since there is a ruche too, as on some early Regency spencers.

Spangling

You know already about the embroidery, and how it was all an experiment in using the flat, almost untwisted filament silk normally used in 18th century and early 18th century silk embroidery, as well as in couching down chenille thread, another common embroidery element.

Yet there are spangles, too. How did I add those? The same way de Saint Aubin, in L'Art du Brodeur, suggests, with two stitches run through the same hole. Sometime I will show you in a mini tutorial.

By the way, because the spangles were thought of after the garment was sewn up, when adding them I slid the needle between lining and fashion fabric rather than sewing through both fashion fabric and lining, so as to keep the inside of the garment as free as possible of embroidery thread stitches.

Ruche and Neckline Shape

You also know already about my 2012 plans for a neckline ruche, and how I felt that the bodice straps would have to be curved, hollowed out at the neckline. In the event, it turned out no hollowing was needed, and my strap pieces were so wide anyhow that I had to cut them narrow and straight anyhow, so that all curve was lost.

I was so silly during the design and fitting phase: the ruche can create the curved shaping to the neckline! Just curve the ruche as you sew it down, and glide it over the corners where the straps meet the bodice fronts and backs, and there you have it, a pleasant round curve. Straightforward. No silly fancy cutting needed. The trim creates the curve. Sigh...lesson learned. Hey, that's what this is all about. Many failures can lead to a success :}

Pinning the ruche to the spencer.

Anyhow, why is the ruche so flattish? Because so many extant garments show ruches to be scant, and laid quite smooth. To make the shantung behave and not fray, I was going to use gum arabic, which had been used in the 18th century to stop fraying. However, this proved unnecessary. Why? Because I pressed the ruche silk, and starched it stiff. That made pleating fairly easy, produced the flat box pleats, and prevented fraying on its own. Yes, the shantung takes starch just fine; I soaked the fabric with it. So we'll experiment with gum arabic some other time.

Oh, you ask, won't the starch come out if the garment gets wet? Yes, of course, but this is a luxury garment, and it's fragile all the way around, and entirely unwashable. I wouldn't wear a hand-embroidered silk garment anywhere near the weather. Should the pleating lose its freshness, I can remove it and redo it -- that would be an entirely expected 18th century move -- or carefully re-starch and re-press it in place.

Why the Ruche Is Wider in Back

I liked a wide ruche in back; it gives extra oomph, and reminds me a bit of a collar. Ruching could be graduated during the period.

Yet there's a practical reason for it. It arises out of a fitting and sewing error.

Way back when I fitted the spencer, in 2012, the neckline wasn't all that deep, and the spencer came just above the natural waist. For safety, too, I made very wide seam allowances.

When I cut out the actual pieces in January 2013, somehow the straps got longer, and I thought, wait, this is so long-waisted! So I trimmed the bottom of the spencer shorter.

Once sewn up, the back neckline was very low indeed. Sure, there is at least one example of this, at the Met.

Spencer, Metropolitan Museum of Art, circa 1800. 11-60-295F

Yet the spencer would look strange with the dress neckline projecting above it. No neckline projects below.

Detail from plate in Gallery of Fashion, Bunka Gakuen Library.

Or here, either.

Detail of bodice (as it was described in the text), April 1794,
Gallery of Fashion, Bunka Gakuen Library.

Nuts. That's what you get for spreading a project over such a long period of time! Another lesson learned, maybe. Sometimes time just gets in the way.

So the, ahem, brilliant idea occurred to me of faking a higher back neckline with a wide ruche. Thus it is that on my spencer, in the back only the lower part of the ruche is actually sewn to the garment. The top line of stitching serves only as a stay, to keep the pleats in place and to match the rest of the stitching. I worry not at all about it. My inspiration spencer is a wildly homemade thing, the spencer above is roughly constructed, garments of the period are often pieced...one did what was needed. The same applies here. I did what was needed to make the garment work, and to recover from an error.

Below you can see the fabric for the ruche, cut with a graduated thickness. Given that the ruche is scant, the fabric making it being about 1.5 times as long as the finished trim, I totally eyeballed how much of the fabric needed to be wide and how much not, and when the trim was tacked on, used the pinker to graduate the curve a bit in some places.

Ruche trim pinned in place. The pinning process is straightforward. Eyeball each box pleat to about an inch wide, press the fabric with your fingers, pin it down. Leave about 1/4" space, and do it again. The starch ensures the pleat stays fixed.

So there we are. I'll wear it to a Regency-themed picnic this Saturday, and see how it does. Next up, photoshoot!