A regency reticule - or what else can you do while the museums are closed?

You might ask now: A reti-what?

Quoting Wikipedia:

A reticule, also known as a ridicule or indispensable, was a type of small handbag or purse, similar to a modern evening bag, used mainly from 1795 to 1820.^[1] According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the name "reticule" came from the French réticule, which in turn came from the Latin reticulum, a diminutive of rete, or "net".^[2]

Clear now? Good.

 In my search for exciting new things to do with my embroidery machine, I came across SewStine's Etsy store, where she is selling the embroidery designs she digitized for her own historical costumes. Most of them are hopelessly beyond the capabilities of my humble combined hobby machine, but one especially caught my eye: the design for an embroidered reticule as a reproduction of an original in the Rijksmuseum. And it did fit into my machine's embroidery frame, yay!

My local patriotism (after all, the Rijksmuseum is only about 200m away and entertains me several times per hour with its bells) immediately kicked in, and as I do have a Regency outfit somewhere on my To-Sew-List anyway I figured I should do what you do with any important project and start with the least important part. 

The embroidery design stitched out really nicely and took about 2 hours, including the 24 colour changes I had to do - this kind of elaborate design is just a lot easier to do on a multi-needle dedicated embroidery machine. Unfortunately my machine does not cut jump stitches (when the needle moves from one part of the design to the other) automatically, so I also had to do a lot of snipping threads in between. Definitely worth the effort though.

I used some silks scraps that I still had lying around and the Brother polyester embroidery thread that I got with my machine. It is lined with linen that was left over from the Italian Gown I am making at the moment as well (still need to write something about that).

Sewstine documented her own version of the reticule here on youtube, but being the smartass that I am I went back to the documentation of the original item in the Rijksmuseum archives, and according to the description the bag is made of 4 parts, and not 2 - admittedly, that is really not visible in the archive picture and the description is only in Dutch. The back side has the same embroidery, although I changed the colour of the little ribbon. The side parts are plain (according to the description they are embroidered on the original as well though), have the same shape as front and back and are folded inwards.

I also needed a cord as drawstring and found some very discounted embroidery floss in a matching brown colour. Someone suggested Lucet braiding to me, which incidentally would also be more or less period accurate. I do not own a lucet though - so instead of sacrificing a fork for it, I improvised one out of my partner's Lego :).

The original has acorns with tassels attached to the points of the bag, but being a bit seasonally challenged in the acorn-department I used some beads instead that I still had in my stash. I think I still need to work on the closure mechanism as well. There is a "schuifring" on the original that I could not quite wrap my head around before, now having the reticule in my hand I think I understand how it's supposed to work.

While working on it I was listening to the first book of The Laundry Files, The Atrocity Archives, which is also partially set inside the archives of the Rijksmuseum. Funny coincidence, they did not mention coming across any embroidered antique bags though :)

And of course I had to snap a picture in front of the Rijksmuseum!