Ribbon Embroidered Regency Reticule

Rummaging in my fabric stash a few weeks ago, I found a piece of soft peach silk dupioni and unfolding it, saw that at some point I’d begun embroidering it with wild dog roses. It took a bit of head-scratching, but eventually I worked out I’d started this piece back all the way back in high school. That’s quite a while ago now. Why on earth had I abandoned it? It was such pretty fabric, and the embroidery looked like it was really going somewhere. I decided that i would finish the piece, and it would become an ribbon embroidered regency reticule! What a simple weekend project that would be!

…. Right?

Going back into my stash once again, I pulled out an embroidery frame, my box of silk ribbons, and another box of silk threads…

(You can find other examples of my ribbon embroidered pouches HERE and HERE! The point being, this was not my first rodeo.)

And oh boy.  It was quickly very clear why I’d abandoned the project the first time round. I tend to use dupioni for ribbon embroidery as I find that silk ribbons pass very cleanly through the dupioni silk- far more easily than they do through taffeta. But this soft-and-supple-seeming dupioni was so tough and tightly woven that I could hardly get a needle through it.  To drag a ribbon through it required serious muscle power and a pair of pliers. The mystery now wasn’t why I’d abandoned the project the first time round. The mystery was why I hadn’t burned it in a fire and salted the earth afterwards.

I abandoned my first plan of unpicking the rather-badly-laid-out rose stems and starting the composition over, and instead, I forged ahead with the composition i had in front of me. Leaf by little rose leaf, I dragged green ribbons through that horrible silk. All that tension between stressed ribbons and stressed fabric mean that my little rose bush is not the healthiest-looking plant in embroidery history. In fact, I’m pretty sure it looks like a picture of sawfly. I pressed on, swearing ineffectually, until there was a nasty snap, and only the front half of the needle came through.

Yep.  My, soft and supple silk had actually broken a tapestry needle in half.

Dropping all plans for more leaves, I tied my ribbon off. Threading up the smallest, thinnest needle I could get away with, I started embroidering rose thorns instead. Lots of rose thorns. This was NOT a friendly rose bush.

Once I’d wrestled the embroidery into submission, turning it into something I could show off was practically a walk in the park. I needed a regency reticule, so I made that.  

I knew it would need to fit my phone and a wallet, as well as any other little sundries i might be toting around, so figured out some dimensions, cut out a template, marked it up and cut it out, cut it out again in plain silk taffeta to make a lining, and stitched it all up.

A hand-stitched drawstring channel was next.

Then a pair of green ribbon drawstrings to match the rose leaves, and lastly, a hank of green silk thread became a set of little silk tassels for the corners.

And voila – a ribbon embroidered regency reticule!

The embroidery might not be perfectly accurate to the period, but it is very pretty and photogenic, and I never need to sew this awful silk again. So there.

If you’d like to learn more about regency reticules, The Regency Wardrobe Collection has a great round-up HERE, and the Dreamstress has a great one HERE.

Frolicking Frocks made a lovely embroidered 2-sided reticule in white silk HERE

Auris Lothol made embroidered on white linen HERE

And KozyKitty made a large workbag style reticule HERE!