Recovering a Modern Parasol

Recovering a Modern Parasol

So next to velvet, moire is my favorite fabric. And this lovely stuff showed up  at a local thrift store and just had to come home with me.

Now this would be considered more of a bengaline than a moire but for sake of post turkey coma and commonly used terminology, any fabric with a "wood grain" pattern hot rolled into the fabric is normally called moire by the modern humans and thus will be dubbed in this article.

So I cut a hole in my fabric for the top spoke, stuck it on the middle spoke, and pinched the excess fabric and draped it. Drew a chalk line with tailor's chalk and stuck it through the machine. Through sheer luck, I was able to get the seam lines to basically match up with the ribs so it looked pretty good. I then pinned the raw edges up underneath to do a raw hem.

Probably should have ironed this. Part of any good creative process is staring at you creation for a good 2 hours trying to decide what to fix and what imperfections you can live without.

In the end I decided to do some snazzy cutty stuff with pinking sheers. In theory the edges might have been hemmed or ruffled but alas, Santa did not bring any ruffle shears so pinking it is. There might be fringe or tassels added later, maybe a hem but for not this will have to do. Rib tips will be added as well at a later date. I really wasn't going for a specific date, just wanting to have something to shade myself with. I did make it a lot smaller. I started out nearly 27" across and is now only 19" across. 

Here are some originals to make up for my not period accurate attempts

Met Museum, Belgian applique lace from 1880-89

Met Museum Silk Parasol 1860's

Met Museum Silk Parasol 1860's

Met Museum "Marquise Parasol" 1860's

You can see even more here at the Metropolitan Museums full online collection of Parasol's.https://www.metmuseum.org/search-results#!/search?q=parasol