At Her Leisure

The thread for my pocketbook came earlier than expected so I finished the embroidery for the pocketbook yesterday. The wool tape to bind it with also came yesterday so I have everything I need to finish up the project. There are other things I want to finish first, but I’m glad I’ve got the parts now.

Why is it that every time I post that I won’t get time to sew or something is going to take a long time to finish, I am proven wrong? I ended up getting to sew last night and tonight, and now the skirt is nearly ready to put on the bodice. I just have a little bit more to gather, and then I’ll be ready to start setting the waist. The front isn’t done, but I want to get the back on so I can figure out where the top of the front goes and how deep to cut the front slit.

I did not finish outlining the figures on the pocketbook because I ran out of black thread. Fortunately I think the needlepoint store in Ft. Worth sells Appleton’s wools. I can’t go this Friday because of the holiday, but maybe I can get over there next Friday. In the meantime, I’ve started filling in motifs and doing the date and initial block. I was kind of hoping to finish the embroidery by the end of the week, but I’m really not sure whether I’m on track for that or not.

It's been a low-key sewing week. We've been working on some trim in the house, which has left little time for sewing but came out well. I've been working a little on a 1780's chemise dress, the kind with a fitted back and sleeves but a gathered front and skirt rather than the earlier giant tube with sleeves. The bodice except the full-length front panel and the sleeves are finished. I still have the whole skirt to do. My cotton voile is in two pieces, but I think I might be able to get the whole thing out of one of the pieces, which would be nice. We shall see. The next step is to get a box of costumes down off the shelf to measure how long the skirt panels need to be.

I've worked a little on the flamestitch pocketbook too, and the three center rows are finished. I moved the frame last night. I'm afraid I'll have to do the last bit on the ends in the hand instead of in the frame because I didn't buy much extra fabric and it seems like it will be a bit stiff to put in a hoop. We shall see about that one too.

Now that the Christmas ornaments are finished, I started one of those 18th century pocketbooks. It's one that's patterned in Fitting and Proper. The museum page is here: https://mycchc.catalogaccess.com/objects/29491. It's using the leftover wools from my embroidered 1805 dress from a couple of years ago with the addition of blues, browns, and black. I just bought the small skeins this time. It's done on petit point canvas, though it gives me a slightly larger gauge than the original (22ct for me, 25ct for the original). I had to double the 2-ply crewel wools to get good coverage so if I wanted to do more flamestitch/Bargello/Irish stitch in the future, I would probably plan for 4-ply wools. On the other hand, the leftovers may be more useful as 2-ply so maybe not.

I've mostly been working on the 1897 evening dress, but in between times I've made some nice progress.


The whole thing is eleven rows of four motifs. It's physically harder to do than cross-stitch because the wools are thicker than the cotton embroidery threads, but it's mentally easier because it's a single repeated motif with the same fill pattern in different colors.

I finished the kids' Christmas ornaments early this year. These are the second half of the "Christmas Village Ornaments" kit. Once again I left off the cording so these would match the first three from 2023.

I’m really glad I made the new garters as soon as I gave my old ones away because I ended up wearing them to the DFWCG tea today. I wore Regency and didn’t even think about the garters until I was pulling them out. I really do take having the underwear I need for granted.

I nearly finished the bodice of my 1897 evening dress last weekend. I just have to make up and set the sleeves in it. I washed the lace for the sleeves during the week so I'd like to get those in this weekend.

I started the beading on the skirt and am about a third of the way through the first side. The beading can be a bit hard on the back because I spread it out on a table and end up rather hunched over it. If I thought I were going to take up beading intensively, I'd definitely have to come up with a better solution. For a couple weeks worth of time on one dress, it's not worth it. I'll just try to alternate days of beading with days of doing other sewing.

The goal for the weekend is to finish beading the pieces for the bodice of the 1897 dress. I made good progress on it yesterday after doing nothing on it Friday. Finishing today seems reasonable.

In case someone needs to knit a penguin: https://archive.org/details/krl00648091/mode/2up