Watches and Watch Pockets

As timeliness can be very important during Liendo tours and I prefer not to use my modern phone, I have taken to wearing pocket watches for the last year or so.  I had been wearing modern ones that look period-ish but finally bit the bullet and bought an antique one.  Seller thought 1860ish based on serial number but I don't actually know.  Something about it tells me it isn't 1860's, but the face is right, it is key wound, and does still keep time so as far as actual date, I feel as though it works for my purposes.

I bought an antique chain to use for now, although it doesn't quite match my watch in color.  My plan is on adding a bit of gold chain to the end to put the keys my watch came with so that I do not lose them.

To store the watch, Godey's Lady's Books frequently include directions for watch pockets, watch cases, or watch hooks.  Here are a few that I found.

I chose to do this one to start off with.

It is in the Juvenile Work Department and the directions are given as by a mother to her little daughter.  I figured if a little girl could be expected to do this, so could I.

I had to change a few things.  Firstly, I could not find silk or cotton netting as is described in the text so I left it out.  Subsequently, I had to leave out the straw that was woven into the netting.  So basically, I used cardboard, glue, some silk scraps, silk ribbon, and some cotton thread.

I made shape as described, 7" by 4.5" and cut it in a teardrop shape as the mother said to do.  As per directions, I did two of these shapes and glued some silk fabric onto them then squashed them together so that both the front and back were identical.  Then I whip stitched the edges all around.  For the pocket, I didn't have any stiff muslin so I used some cardstock and covered that in silk the same manner as the teardrops.  I used 1" ribbon from Dharma Trading that was hand dyed with their acid dyes and did 1/2" box pleats for the trim.  Then I stitched the trim all on and added the bow.  I ended up also adding a silk hook to hang it from a doorknob as I most likely will.

The whole project took about an hour and cost me nothing as everything used was scraps from other projects.  I ended up finding some organdy that could be used as stiff muslin so I may make another one with brown silk and green ribbon in the near future.

Enjoy!