Sort-of Tutorial! Early 19th Century Round Reticule

I knew I wanted an unusual and fun reticule for NOLA, but with very limited time it had to be something easy to make (as much as I would have like to embroider one!).

 I came across a handful of these circular reticules, and decided to make one inspired by the silk examples. The cotton ones are lovely, and I had cotton in the stash. But if you zoom in on the cotton ones, you'll see that all of the pieces are meticulously hemmed, and then the puffy part is whip gathered to the circles (what I call the medallions). Phew. That was a lot of handwork, and as I said I had very little time, and my wrist problems as well. (Also the opening on the cotton one is different than the silks).

Since there are no interior images of the silk bags, the construction is a bit of guess work. Ultimately, I made four silk-covered medallions--two for each side--and sandwiched the gathered strip in-between them. I used a very fine slip stitch to put it together.

The medallions are cut from pasteboard and then covered with silk similar the way you would cover a button with fabric, cutting it larger than the form and gathering it to fit snugly.

The two silk bags vary quite a bit in size; one is just over 6" across and the other is just over 10". Mine falls in the middle at 8" across.

I figured out the size to cut the pieces by figuring that the medallions were roughly 1/3 of the finished "diameter" of the entire circle bag. I guess I was going for 9" finished, and ended up with 8" because I forgot to add seam allowance to the gathered section... So my medallions are 3" across. Then I cut a long strip of silk for the gathered section. Mine measured 6" wide, and I honestly can't remember how long the strip was... But I actually cut some off because it would have been too full. So that's something you can eyeball and finish according to your taste. The ends of the strip need to have channels sewn in for the draw strings before being gathered and attached to the medallions.

Again because of time and wrist constraints, I only decorated one medallion, although having both decorated seems to be the norm. I just did simple chain stitch in silk thread and silver spangles (I literally have thousands...).

I hope that makes some kind of crazy sense! I'm calling this a sort-of tutorial because I don't have step-by-step instructions, but I really feel I should be doing helpful things like construction posts more often!