Attaching the leaf to a 19th century hand fan

The next project with the fan was to put a new leaf on it. The leaf is the cloth bit that creates what we think of as the face of the fan. Before doing that, I needed to decide how wide the fan opened. In the Regency they tended to open to 120 degrees and later widened out to the full 180. I laid out the ribs in both configurations to see which one it wanted to be. In line with the guess that the fan is from the 1880s or 1890s, it really wants to be at the full 180 degrees though it was tempting to try to tweak it to work for the period Shades of Milk and Honey is set in.

Using the opened fan as a guide, I made a pattern out of paper for the leaf.
The original leaf appeared to be an ivory net but had almost completely disintegrated. As it happens, I had scraps of my wedding veil in a box downstairs so I used that as the new leaf. Taking photos of the piece is pointless because it is quite, quite sheer.

Using a VERY fine grade sand-paper I took off the remnants of the original net and glue from the sticks.

While sanding them, I made the interesting discovery that one of the sticks is ivory while the rest are very thin wood. In this photo, it’s the yellower one to the left of the one I’m painting. My best guess is that the entire thing had ivory sticks at some point and they broke. This also makes me wonder if the fan ribs and guards might be older than the foil.

I used an unbleached titanium acrylic to touch up the places where the old paint had chipped away.

With scotch tape on the back of the sticks, I taped the leaf to the front of the sticks. I had made marks on the leaf pattern to indicate where I wanted the sticks to be in the finished fan.

This bit was the fiddliest bit.

After that, I used a fabric glue to essentially decoupage the cloth to the sticks, which is how it appears to have been in the original. It initially took forever to do this because of the fabric wanting to pull away from the fan. By the end I realized that the reason that scotch tape had been recommended is that the glue doesn’t stick to it, so I could tape the entire stick firmly to the fan with no worries.

Behold! A fuzzy photo of the leaf attached to the fan. It folds and everything, although making creases so it folds exactly where I want it to is going to be something of a challenge.

Apparently, you set the creases while the leaf is attached to the fan. Am I nervous? Yes, yes I am.