A Coral Necklace Should be Pretty Quick to Make. . . Right??

 A coral necklace. Felicity, the American Girl had one, and as I intend to re-create Felicity’s dresses for myself, clearly I needed one too. 

Coral necklaces were fashionable in the late18th and early 19th century, so one would be something I could wear with multiple history ensembles, not just the Felicity outfits I’m slowly (very slowly) making.

With this in mind I bought 3 different sizes of red glass beads (much more readily available and affordable than coral) and some silk cord to string them on. I did a bit of reading and learned that the cord should be knotted between each bead. I saved extant coral jewelry on Pinterest to get an idea of what my necklace should look like. Then I did more reading about the types of knots I should make between each bead. And finally, about a year after I bought my supplies, I began stringing my beads and making little knots between each one at the end of 2020.

I threaded two needles with the silk cord and threaded each bead on both pieces of cord, then knotted the two cords together between each bead. And I utterly failed to get a single picture of the process.

It’s was a very slow and tedious process. I’d intended to make a double strand necklace like I’d seen in Regency portraits, but with each little bead I strung that seamed more and more overwhelming. Eventually I decided just to make a double stranded bracelet instead, and I finished that at the end of 2021.

Yeah, that’s right, it took me a YEAR to make one little bracelet. Admittedly, it only took that long because I kept deciding the project was too tedious and abandoning it for months on end. I most likely could have finished it in a timely manner if I’d only put my mind to it and done it. But I had no motivation to do that.

Once the bracelet was done I decided to forget about the necklace idea for a while. If a bracelet had taken me a year to finish, how long would a necklace take?!?!

Only a day it would turn out. Less than that actually.

In May of 2022 my husband brought Covid home from work so we had a nice 10 days of being quarantined at home. (As sucky as being sick is, the introvert in me rather appreciates an excuse to stay home.) For the most part during that time I felt well enough to get a lot of fun sewing projects done, however, there was one day I didn’t feel like getting out of bed. So after resting, reading, and napping, I pulled out the red glass beads and set about stringing and knotting a coral necklace for myself. 

I decided to do a single strand necklace for myself this time rather than attempt a double strand like I did for the bracelet. (I’m referring to strands of beads here, not strands of silk cord, each bead is still strung on two strands of silk cord.)

And by the end of the afternoon that necklace was done! Not perfect at all, some of my knots and the gaps between the beads are far from even, but done nonetheless!

I now had a set of coral jewelry! I might go back later and mark a nicer necklace with more even knots, now that I know the technique and have proved to myself that one little piece of jewelry doesn’t have to take a year to make, but for now I’m thrilled with this set.

I wore it with my 18-teens dress for the Federalist era fashion show I participated in back in September.

And again for my Pet en Lair photo shoot in December.

And when I finish the next installment of my Felicity series (very close on that actually) I’ll wear the necklace with that too!

To finish the story of my coral jewelry off, the necklace was my entry for challenge #3 of The Historical Sew Monthly last year: 

What the item is: Coral Necklace

The Challenge: Non-Woven - there’s nothing woven here! Just twisted cord, knotted between each bead, glass beads, and a metal clasp.

Material: Red glass beads 

Pattern: none

Year: Late 18th century and Early 19th

Notions: Heavy silk thread and necklace clasp

How historically accurate is it? The thread/string material is correct. The beads would most likely be actual coral during that time, not glass. The clasp style is not correct as far as I know. My knots are not very pretty, and I’m sure they would have looked better in the era.

To summarize: the look is mostly good, there’s no plastic, and the string type is correct. We’ll say 60%

Hours to complete: 2-3

First worn: September 3rd, for a 1799-1820 fashion show

Total cost: probably $10ish, but it’s been over two years since I bought the materials so I really can’t remember.

My Sister's Peacock Blue Regency Wrap Dress

 As I mentioned yesterday, I made my sister a new Regency era dress to wear to her Regency Dinner Party birthday party.

I basically made her a regency era inspired princess dress, because she was the birthday girl, the princess of the evening, how could I not?

After months of dreaming and brainstorming, coming up with ideas and rejecting them, this dress finally began when I sent my sister to my fabric stash and told her to pick a fabric. 

She chose a peacock blue taffeta. I picked this taffeta up on a day trip with my husband last spring. It's a polyester, but one of the nicest polyester taffetas I've ever handled. It was a great price and a gorgeous color, so I think I picked up 12 yards. I could certainly use about 4 yards for a dress for my sister!

Once the fabric was picked, we started discussing the design. We looked through my pattern collection and talked about different ideas. We looked at extant taffeta regency dresses on Pinterest. We considered trim options. After all that, our favorite dress was this 1810's dress we found on Pinterest. I have no idea where this picture originated, but it's been shared on many different blogs.

We also quite liked this late 1790's fashion plate from the Rijks Museum.

A regency wrap dress - that's what we wanted! There was just one issue, I didn't own a pattern for such a thing. Now I'm pretty sure I could have hacked a couple of the patterns I did have to get something passable, but I was a little limited on time, so I took the easy way out and bought the Sense and Sensibility Elegant Ladies' Closet pattern. Nice size range, exact style we wanted, reasonable price, quick to download and print out - it would do!

I allowed myself 2 days to make the dress, then I needed to get back to working on my dress for the fashion show. I cut out the dress and assembled the bodice the first day, then attached the skirt and trimmed the dress the second day.

My sister specifically requested that the dress have her favorite style of regency sleeves.

Short puffed over sleeves and long straight under sleeves. Since the pattern included 3 different sleeve options that was an easy request to accommodate. 

I flatlined the back of the bodice with a sturdy white cotton. For the bodice front lining flap thingies I used a blue cotton from my stash. (Left over from my sister's Japanese Festival costume from many years ago.) Due to my tight time frame, I didn't bother finishing most of the sleeves. This fabric didn't seem to want to fray too much. 

These front bodice flaps are meant to be pinned closed, but I thought that would probably annoy my sister so I decided to add buttons and buttonholes instead.

As far as the outer bodice goes, the waist/underbust seam is bound in grosgrain ribbon, and the underlap fastens at the side seam with a ribbon tie.

The overlapping side fastens with a hook and eye. The neckline is finished off with bias tape.

The sleeves, front opening, and hem are all trimmed with a white flowery lace from my stash.

I had just barely enough to go around the whole front opening and hem. 

I was quite pleased with how quickly and easily the dress went together, but there are a few things I wish I'd done differently, and might want to go back and change later. 

I ignored the skirt pattern pieces and just made the skirt gathered all the way around, like the 1790's fashion plate we liked. Honestly, I wish I'd made the front skirt flat like the pattern recommended, I think it would look nicer. The pleats on the bodice front along with the gathered skirt just makes things look bulky.

 The second issue I have is with the shoulders.

They're just too wide. the pleats at the shoulder seams really need to be tacked down rather than left free. 

This is an easy fix I can take care of later, but I wish the pattern instructions (which I did actually reference a few times throughout construction) mentioned this. I was a bit surprised when my sister tried on the dress, the night before her party, and the shoulders were too wide. 

Annoyances aside, my sister looked absolutely beautiful in her dress!

I'm so glad I got to make it for her!

And her birthday party was a lot of fun!

All the Regency Dresses in One Weekend

 My sister hatched a plan for her birthday party - a regency themed dinner party with the family, extended family, and some friends. Ohhh yes! I was all for this idea!

After hatching the plan, it was scheduled - for a weekend I already had a regency event scheduled for. Thus, I would take part in a Regency Fashion Show on Saturday and a Regency Dinner Party on Sunday. It was time for my early 19th century wardrobe to get some use!!

The Regency Fashion Show was scheduled for Saturday morning at a local historical site. The site portrays life from about 1799-1820, and several of us from the Saint Louis Historical Sewing Society took part in the fashion show.

We had a pretty good showing of styles from throughout the era, but you'll just have to take my word for it because I failed to take any pictures. Sorry!

I used the fashion show as an excuse to make the 1810's dress I've been planning and hoarding fabric for for the past 6-8 years. I finished my dress and bonnet around 1am Friday night.

That was about 10 hours before the fashion show started and 8 hours before I needed to leave home. So I really wasn't under *too* much of a time crunch.

My mom and sister came to see the fashion show and then the three of us spent an enjoyable afternoon wandering around the site, visiting the bakery and the tavern, talking to the interpreters, knitters, rope makers, rug makers, dyers, and such. It was a fiber arts show case weekend, which was, of course, of immense interest to my sister and I. She was able to learn a bit about the history of crochet - her current favorite craft.

Once we'd had our fill, we headed back to my parents' house to prepare the the Regency Dinner Party birthday gathering the next day.

Cooking, cleaning, and just a little bit of sewing.

Thanks to three different Pride and Prejudice plays over the past 7 or 8 years, my siblings and cousins had a pretty nice array of Regency costumes for the evening.

My mom wore her dress from my wedding and my aunt borrowed one of the costumes she'd made for my cousin.

Since she was the birthday girl, I did make my sister a new dress for the occasion. The other young ladies looked fantastic in their Pride and Prejudice dresses.

About half the guys dressed up to some extent. Our costume collections are a little short on things for the men.

My niece had a dress I made her last fall, which worked beautifully for the occasion. The only lady who didn't have a Regency-ish dress of some sort was my sister-in-law. So at about 9pm, the night before the party, my sister and I decided we'd better remedy that and set about making her a quick drawstring dress.

After about 3-4 hours of sewing we had a passible Regency dress. One day I'd like to make her a nicer Regency dress, but this worked for the evening!

I wore my open robe, which I finished trimming sometime last summer.

 An evening of lots of card playing. . .

Delicious dinner!

And just hanging out and catching up.

It was a delightful evening!

A pretty good way to celebrate my sister's birthday if I do say so myself!