An 1860's Lace Parasol

Out of the ten parasols I own, six of them are from the 1850's.  I have one from the 1870's and one from the 1840's.  So I truly only have two parasols from the 1860's.  I've actually survived on just one 1860's parasol for the last five years-my half-finished marquis.  Since I mostly docent (and can do either 1850's or 1860's as I see fit) and only do a few 1860's events a year, just one parasol is fine.  Now that my basic 1860's parasol was done, I decided to move on to the fancy one.

I purchased this parasol back in January but didn't touch it for a while.  The finial refused to come off and I never had to work around a finial before.  I wasn't looking forward to it.  I had read and heard that working around finials isn't fun and can be very difficult and fiddly.  And, I only needed one parasol for the 1860's and a marquis is a very serviceable parasol for all kinds of impressions.  Therefore, I dragged my feet a bit in getting started.

The original cover was long gone.  It was probably in such poor shape that some misguided soul decided to replace it to help it sell.  I say misguided because the parasol had been recovered in a shiny, stretchy polyester!  Not even close to what would have originally been on it!  The polyester was a cream color, which could have very well been the original cover however, you also see many colors underneath Chantilly lace parasols-blue, green, orange, brown, purple, white, cream, etc.  I really wanted blue at first since blue is one of my favorite colors, but I already have two fabric lengths of blue to recover parasols so I felt the need to do something different.  The color I felt worked best for the majority of my dresses was purple.

Original purple Chantilly parasol from an auction site

I purchased some purple silk from Pure Silks to recover it.  Since I bought my silk online, the purple came out darker than the original, which I'm not a huge fan of, but it still looked nice when it was completed.

I tried making a pattern from the slimy polyester but when putting it on the parasol to test it out, it clearly wouldn't work.  I then realized that the 1850's parasol I recovered just exactly the size of this parasol and I had that original cover.  I ended up using a piece of the original as a pattern for this parasol and it worked perfectly.  Seriously.  I have never made a cover that fit so well!  It makes me think that I may actually be getting a handle on the parasol recovery thing!

See those pretty little scallops along the edge?  I have spent years looking for an original pinking machine that makes scallops inside of scallops.  Couldn't find a one.  Finally, I stumbled upon, this website that sells a machine meant for pinking felt for taxidermy purposes.  It seemed too good to be true!  I splurged and got one.  It took me a while to figure out how to get it to cut silk (I almost sent it back) but in the end I got it to work.  They aren't exactly like original pinks.  These are 3/4" inch across, the originals are 1".  These make little pointed pinks instead of true scallops but once they ravel a bit (as all of them will), it looks exactly the same.  I can live with 1/4" difference in size.

I used it for my marquis, too.  I've grown quite fond of pinking things and now I'm thinking of all the projects I can pink with it!

Back to the point, after covering it comes lining it.  Unfortunately, the lining didn't turn out as good as the cover-there are some wrinkles.  I used the same pattern piece so I'm blaming it on the slinky china silk I used for the lining :).  I'll probably eventually reline it when I get my hands on some white silk lawn.  But it'll do for now.

Yay for two 1860's parasols!  I guess next I need to start working on some 1850's ones!