Ribbon Embroidered Regency Reticule

A few weeks ago, rummaging in my fabric stash, I found a piece of soft peach silk dupioni fabric. 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 now – 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 to my stash, I pulled out an embroidery frame, my box of silk ribbons, and another box of silk threads –

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 fabric – far more easily than they do through taffeta. But this particular soft-and-supple-seeming dupioni was so tought and tightly woven that I could hardly get a needle through it.  To drag a ribbon through as well, 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 afterwards.

I abandoned my first plan –  to unpick the rather-badly-laid-out stems and start the composition over. Instead, I forged ahead. Leaf by little rose leaf, I dragged the thin ribbon through that horrible silk.  The resulting tension issues in the ribbons AND the fabric mean that my little rose bush is not the healthiest-looking rose bush in embroidered history – in fact I’m pretty sure 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 any plans for more leaves, I tied 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 figured out some dimensions, cut out a template, marked it up, cut it out, and stitched it 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.