Ribbon Embroidered Regency Reticule

Rummaging in my fabric stash a few weeks ago, I found a piece of soft peach silk dupioni. Unfolding it, I 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 in High School.  That’s quite a while ago – so 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, I pulled out an embroidery frame, my box of silk ribbons, and another box of silk threads…

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 particular 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, I had to pull the needle through the fabric with 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.

I abandoned my first plan, to unpick the rather-badly-laid-out stems and start the composition over, and instead, I forged ahead. Leaf by little rose leaf, I dragged 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 it’s got sawfly. But 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 and threaded up the smallest needle I could get away with and 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.