Shift and stays for 1810

The stays are hand sewn from cotton twill and cotton sateen with linen thread. They are bound with cotton tape and have a wooden busk and spiral steel center back bones. They are made using J.S. Bernhardt's Schnürleib Fig.C -diagram in Sabine's excellent 'Short Stays' Studies.

The shift is made from handkerchief weight linen and hand sewn with linen thread.

I had made the shift in 2009 during my (then) short lived desire to make a regency outfit. I had made the sleeves accidentally too tight and I had to figure out a quick fix to that problem. My solution was slashing open the underarm gusset and inserting a gore.

Stays details:

The neckline has a drawstring to adjust the fit.

Busk is held in place by lacing it through two eyelets on the bottom of the busk pocket.

Underside:

Why you should always make a mock-up:

Making these stays wasn't my brightest moment in this hobby. I was under a tight schedule and because the pattern is so simple, I thought I could get away with just measuring everything carefully to determine the right size for the gores. I took 2 cm off of both sides at the CF edge (4 cm in total) to prevent it being too loose and trusting my math, begun sewing it together. The finished stays fit in their own way but the shape was completely wrong for 1810.

I tried to fix it by adding two more gussets on both sides of the original bust gussets and changing the shape of them all to more U-shaped. Then I was able to wear it higher and tighten the shoulder straps more to keep it there. Because of that, the waist of the stays doesn't hit my natural waist anymore meaning the hip gores are now cut too high. And I'm not perfectly happy with the shape of the neckline now either. But they do provide the necessary support and worked well under my new riding habit. So even if they are not as pretty as they could have been, they are perfectly functional and that's the main thing.