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.
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| 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!
