Elisa's 18th Century Birthday Pocket

For my friend Elisa's birthday in February I decided to create a mid-late 18th century pocket, complete with insane embroidery.  This project was a bit ambitious, because as any embroidery artist can attest, these take significant amounts of time.  All told I probably spent 35-40 hours on this.

In my design and technique I reference extant pockets, both in museum collections, as well as ones that I have examined personally.  The dimensions for this pocket come from Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, c1750, 2009.300.2102

Metropolitan Museum of Art, c1796, 1979.346.200

The textile I chose, which would have been quite appropriate, as pockets were usually based on an undyed cotton or linen, was a densely woven off-white linen twill.  If you've looked closely at the examples above, the embroidery design I created won't surprise you that much.  Because I didn't have time to order silk embroidery thread, I unplied DMC cotton thread, which due to its glossy texture (a result of mercerization) is not a bad silk stand-in.  Throughout this entire project, I only used three stitches, which was not unusual either: stem stitch, satin stitch, and bullion stitch.

Above you can see the design in progress, with most things already outlined in stem stitch and some satin stitching already completed.  I stretched my linen over an embroidery frame to keep it taut while I stitched and to avoid the "squinching" effect that can happen with unsupported embroidery projects.

The curling leaves at the bottom took a decent amount of time.  I was very careful in my color selection to choose only colors that could have been produced with natural dyes.  No neons!

Here is the completed embroidery after I removed it from the frame.  The whole piece is about twice as long as the frame is, so it was actually the first time I saw the entire thing complete, the rest having been eaten up by the frame's rollers while the worked on the final areas.  The little dots in the flowers at the bottom are the bullion knots.  The final pocket has three layers: the back, the front, and an intermediate layer paired with the front layer to protect the back of the embroidery.

Before I applied the edge binding, everything was basted in place.  This keeps things from "walking" around and turning into puckered areas later.  This is a common problem with multilayered pieces.  This basting was done before I cut the entry slit so that, when I did cut it, the cut edges would stay perfectly aligned.

In order to hide my stitching, I stitched the right sides of the pocket and edge binding together on the front side, and then pressed and slip stitched it down on the back.  My embroidery was a little closer to the edge binding along the slit edge than I would have liked!

Here is the finished thing!  For the ties I substituted braided ties for the typical twill tape ones.  I've seen only rare examples with this type of waist suspension ties, probably because twill tape stands up to more stress, but it occurred to me that an 18th century pocket can be rather difficult to wear nowadays except when one is dressed up in an 18th century dress.  The prettier ties allow this pocket to be tied over one's shoulder and carried as a purse.

That's it, all!  If you're looking to make your own 18th century pocket, you can use similar steps to my own and create one in a few hours, minus the embroidery of course.  It is up to you how decorated you want your pocket, or if it matters that much to you.  The pocket I wear under MY 18th century dress is NOT embroidered!