Knitting a Victorian Miser's Purse

Hello everyone and welcome to my second video of this CoCoVid weekend. I'm really excited to share with you my knitting project in this video but if you're interested in any other historical costuming or costuming in general then I'll leave a link in the description box below to the entire schedule of all the events and videos that are happening this weekend. If you're coming from the future past this weekend then you're in luck because you get to go straight from this video to all the other videos that were released as part of CoCoVid in 2020. If you've been following me for a while then you'll know that I've already knit an 1890s miser's purse before. At the time I was just really curious how a miser's purse worked and so I picked a beautiful emerald green color to knit up the purse and figure out how it functioned. I was trying to think of a way to see if I could use this purse for the current 1890s walking ensemble that I'm creating but since that ensemble is mainly blue, white, and black in color scheme I thought green would be a little bit hard to work into that particular ensemble. So I've decided to re-knit the same exact pattern that I created a little over a year ago. For the yarn for my purse I'm using Knit Picks Luminance Lace. I actually over dyed this yarn to create a darker blue color using a natural plant dye and extracting the indigo from that plant. I released a video a little bit earlier showing the entire process of how I managed to make some mistakes but also finally managed to make a darker blue yarn to make this miser's purse. For the pattern I'm actually using a mash-up of two patterns from the 1892 book The Art of Knitting. I created and wrote out the pattern last time but I've decided that this time I'm going to try a slightly more difficult beading technique to add a little bit more interest to this particular purse and switch it up a little bit from the last time more than just the color. I'll leave a link in the description box below to the original free patterns that I drew from in order to create this mashed up pattern so that you can also create your own interpretation or go with more of an original pattern that was suggested in that 1892 book. I'll also leave a link to the pattern that I created which is a mash-up of the two with instructions on how to do the beading that I did last time. All right so let's get right into knitting this purse. The miser's purse is knit flat and then seamed together to create the tube that will actually hold the coins. Each end of the purse is a lace pattern that I took from one of the two original purse patterns from 1892. I'm using a US size quadruple zero needle or 1.25 millimeter needle to knit this purse and I believe this is much smaller than the first time I knit it and I like how this particular fabric feels much better than the first time so I will be updating my pattern recommendations to use a smaller needle size. From this point onwards it's a bunch of knitting in order to create the lace pattern, a plain stockinette section, and the lace pattern again at the other end of the purse. So let's do some knitting. This is a much faster knit than I remembered from the first time making it although maybe I got used to the pattern and so now it went a little bit faster this time around but I'm completely done with the knitting section of the miser's purse. At this point I decided to block it because I always find that lace knitting looks much better after you block it. It really starts to take shape and open up and you can really see that flower pattern coming through after I took the time to block it. While blocking my yarn I wet it thoroughly and then pin it open and wait overnight for it to dry. The next morning I take out the pins and it is now ready to be seamed together. I fold it in half with the right sides facing each other and I sew one end together such that it is square or flat at the bottom. Each end of the purse will be a different shape. This side will be square and the other side will be rounded so that at a quick glance or with a quick feel you can tell which end of the purse that you're holding. So maybe you're holding different value coins on each end and can more easily grab whichever coins you're looking to take. In order to create the rounded end on the other side of the miser's purse I'm pulling gathering stitches through just one layer of the fabric. These are then pulled taut to gather the end together and to create that rounded effect on the other end versus the squared straight effect on the first end that I had sewn together. After the purse is sewn up making sure to leave a good size slit in the middle stockinette section to insert and remove your coins it's time to put on the rings that'll actually act as the fasteners for your purse. It's important to add these before you do the beading because it'll be impossible to take them off after your beading is complete. I believe these are three quarters of an inch wide. I would recommend maybe a slightly smaller size maybe half an inch which is what I used on my first purse but this is the best that I could do with what I had. Now it was time for me to try the more complicated beading pattern that I had seen on the straight edge of the purse. I tried a few different ways to start this beading this one was from the top down this version was to create like these teardrops to then add them from the bottom up. Spoiler alert none of these two versions particularly worked but I think the third time was a charm and the third time that I tried starting out redoing this beading was working from the bottom up and that actually worked to get me that same elongated teardrop effect at the bottom with a lattice work going up to the bottom edge of the miser's purse. I won't be adding these instructions on how to do this beading to the pattern because to be honest it was incredibly complicated and took me absolute hours of time to finish so I'd highly recommend the first version of the beading that I've written out in the pattern. It is much quicker and also maybe invest in a beading needle because I didn't and I highly regret it because it took a lot longer to do just by hand. Once my lattice beading was finally finished I sewed it on to the square edge of my miser's purse. I do really like how it ended up looking I think it's really beautiful and while not perfect and maybe I could have made it a little bit wider I'm really happy with how much of an extra detail this adds to this version of my miser's purse. In case you were wondering I wanted to give you a little bit of a demonstration of how the miser's purse actually works. So this is the closed position in order to put the coins in the left side of the purse you'll move the one ring from the left to the right side opening the access from the middle slit to that end of the purse. I'm putting all of my silver coins on the left end. To close that side off and put the copper coins on the other side of the purse you'll slide both rings to the left side opening the access from the center slit to the right end of the purse. To secure the coins in each end of the purse you move both rings to the outer sides towards each end of the purse. This way your coins can't come out of the middle slot anymore. I was initially thinking that this might not be particularly secure because I would have rather had half inch rings rather than three quarter inch rings but as you can see I'm testing out the integrity of the purse and even though I'm jostling it around quite a bit the coins stay securely inside each end and don't come out through the middle slot. So there you have it I just finished my second version of my 1890s miser's purse in order to go with my 1892 walking ensemble. I really enjoyed re-knitting the base pattern of the miser's purse and well let's just say I'm happy that I managed to finish the beading for this version of my purse and I'm really happy that the integrity of the purse is actually quite high and it securely contains all of my coins and hopefully I'll get a lot of use out of it wherever I decide to wear my walking ensemble. I'm really excited to be so close to finishing this outfit. My last two pieces will be a fascinator and mittens so if you'd like to continue following me as I finish this outfit then please feel free to subscribe as next time I will be knitting a fascinator to keep my head warm from the yarn that I dyed using Dyer's Woad. I'll see y'all next time!