My First Pair of Stays

I have wanted to make a pair of 18th century stays for a very long time. I'm not really sure what the draw to them was, because I wanted to make a pair before I was even interested in 18th century fashion. I think it had something to do with the structure and all of the boning.

So when American Duchess published Simplicity pattern 8162 for a pair of stays I made sure to buy it the next time patterns were on sale for $1, which ended up being a few weeks after I learned about the pattern.

I held onto the pattern for a while, not sure when I would actually get around to making anything from it. Then in July I was bored and decided "eh, why not start a completely new project?" So I did. I finished the mock up in a couple of days and the only major change I made was to the boning pattern to make the stays fully bonned. I also ended up cutting the pattern in the smallest size in order to be able to lace them closed properly.

Stays are very different from a Victorian corset and are a bit more comfortable because they don't reduce your waist as much. Overall, they're pretty straightforward to make, but sewing the seam binding was torture. I'm really not happy with my work on it, but it is what it is. I know better for next time.

I had the hardest time figuring out how to do the spiral lacing for some reason. I was finally able to figure it out thanks to this tutorial. My brain doesn't work well with numbers, so doing the math on this one took me a while.

 

All of the eyelets are hand sewn and I ended up sewing the seam binding by hand as well, to save my sanity. I opted to hand sew eyelets for two reasons. 1) They're historically accurate. 2) Metal grommets are a pain in the neck for me. I've tried them before and have yet to master them.

Because of the amount of hand sewing I ended up doing on this project I realized how much I actually love sewing by hand and want to do more on future costumes. It's very relaxing

Here's the inside of the stays. I wanted to use a fabric with some color for the outside, but I didn't have anything that would have been period accurate, so I ended up putting the color on the inside. But I ended up with pink seam binding and purple eyelets, which I really like.

Never Before Photographed Projects

Over the last year and a half I've had a lot of projects that I never got around to photographing. Until now. If you follow me on Instagram that you know that I just got a new, processional sewing form (!!!). Today I was taking photo's/video for a review I'll be doing of the form and ended up getting pictures of some of my projects that I haven't gotten photo's of yet. I still have more to photograph, but they needed to be ironed so I'll be doing those on another day.

I'll talk more about the sewing form in my actual review post, but I just wanna say how awesome it is! Not only is it going to make my actual sewing easier, getting photo's of my projects will be a lot easier!

First off, my Victorian corset. I started this one near the end of 2015 and finished it early this year. The pattern I used was from Period Costume for the Stage and Screen by Jean Hunnisett. I used duck canvas from Joann's for the base fabric and flat lined it with this pretty blue fabric I found at a garage sale (I'm not sure what type of fabric it is).

While I really love this corset, I did make a few fitting mistakes and will have to make a new one. But I'm really hesitant because this one is soooo pretty...

Next are my Regency Half Stays. These came together really quickly, I think over the course of a day or two. I also used a pattern from Period Costume for the Stage and Screen. The pattern I used was the Regency corset pattern but I modified it by basically chopping off the bottom half to make half stays instead.

I also used duck canvas from Joann's for this with hand stitched eyelets and ribbon for the lacing.

And finally, my Sontag shawl! I posted at the end of 2015 that I was working on this and I finished it early this year but never got around to getting pictures. I found the pattern on Ravelry for free and it was a good, easy project. This would be a perfect project for a beginner/intermediate knitter.

That's all I've got for now, but I'll be posting my review and more projects that I hadn't gotten either any or any decent photo's of (such as my green Regency dress!).