Lucy Locket Lost Her Pocket

Or making a pair of embroidered pockets for a young girl.

I constructed this pair of pockets for my daughter L, who has grown enough in the past 3 years to need a larger pocket than the first I made. She also needs more room to carry her ever growing collection of 18th century trinkets.

The pockets are sized right between her original "small" pocket and the size I use for my own, measuring approximately 8" by 13". The front opening is 6 inches long, scientifically measured by having her lay her hand out on the pocket before cutting. The pockets themselves are made from 5oz linen, found in my scrap basket and dutch linen tape from Wm. Booth, Draper. The body binding was dyed using just a pinch of "baby blue" fiber reactive dye. Not a period choice, but what I had on hand and needed to use up anyway. Since my intention is for these pockets to last until L is a young woman I constructed them on 2 separate lengths of tape. This way they can tie both in the front & back, allowing the waistband to grow as she does.

The embroidery is worked on 5oz linen from my endless collection of scraps using the beautiful woad dyed wool from Renaissance Dyeing (available through Reconstructing History). I used these as a practice pieces, since embroidery is still a rather new hobby of mine. The design consists of stem stitch, back stitch, french knots, seed stitch & wrapped running stitch. I varied the colors used but kept the stitches the same in each piece. The finished work is them layered with the working portion of the pocket and bound around the edges. This protects the back of the embroidery & makes the pockets a little more durable. For my readers who have seen just how filthy L gets at events, it's pretty clear why they need the extra layers!

The embroidery design is not a historical recreation, just "historically inspired". I saw a similar design sometime last year while searching for 18th century motifs. Sadly, I can not remember where I initially found it. It was most likely one of the endless pile of library books. My one complaint is that her initials are so hard to embroider! After several tries I finally had to settle for an only slightly lopsided "W".

Up next, my (entirely) hand sewn shift!