1740s stays

I'm back from a little sewing and blogging hiatus I've been having since late March / early April. One of the last things I got finished before the break were these stays. But, for various reasons, I never tried them on until today. I still have a couple of finishing touches to make to the proper mid century shift to go under the stays, but I thought I'd post about them now anyway.

The stays are made from two layers of linen canvas, reproduction 18th century silk brocade / droguet as the top layer and linen lining. They are bound with silk grosgrain (the narrower grosgrain over seams is rayon) and hand sewn with linen thread. They are boned with reed.

They are based on the c. 1740 stays in Norah Waugh's Corsets and crinolines with only the side back seams taken in a little at the waist to fit my shape better.

Construction:

I constructed them my usual way. After outlining the pieces, I quilted the boning channels.

I inserted the boning, secured the edges and whip stitched the seam allowances down. Then I made the lacing holes.

Then I whipped the seams together, made horizontal boning cases from linen tape in the stomacher and then bound the stays.

Lastly I added the lining.

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.

My stays pattern

After posting about my new 1780's stays almost a year ago, I've had a steady flow of inquiries for the pattern. The amount of interest has been so vast that I'm very sorry for not being able to send a copy to everyone interested personally. But I hope my decision to share it here instead will make up for that. 

There is nothing revolutionary about the pattern, so I hope you are not disappointed. Most of the late 18th century pattern diagrams I've seen look more or less identical anyway. It's always the same four pieces with slightly different shaping and proportions. These seem to work for me.

The over 200 pieces of boning eats up a lot of the width, so if you want the stays to be about the same size and are using less boning, you need to make the pieces a little narrower. More construction tips and boning layout can be found from the original post.

Thank you very much for all the wonderful compliments about my stays and for your interest in the project! I'm sorry it took me so long to do this, but never in a million years expected anyone to be interested in the pattern and taking the time to go through my unorganized storage and finding the pieces was a daunting task.

Thank you very much also for the recent blog awards! I'm very grateful for each one. I hope you understand if I don't pass them on. It's not that I don't want to spread the joy and make others happy. It's just that it breaks my heart to have to choose the nominees from all the wonderful blogs that all deserve to be rewarded.