18th century stays - tutorial - part 3

In Part 2 of this tutorial we got to a point where your stay pieces were joined together. Now it's time to whip stitch the seam allowances down after the fitting session (and doing possible alterations, as in my case replacing the front panels with wider panels). Shortly after finishing this part of the construction, I learned from 18thcenturystays that you could also double the thread as it's stronger than single thread (so you can do that).

After that, it's time to mark the places for the lacing holes. When I made my first pair of stays this was one of the most puzzling parts for me to figure out and I didn't do it right at first which caused the sides of my stays not to meet evenly at the back. Of course, I hadn't seen Jen of the Festive Attyre's post The zen of the spiral lacing yet so I had to learn this the hard way. Anyhow, I'm just going to take Jen's instuctions a step further and show you how to figure out the places for the lacing holes step by step.

I hope the following makes sense... 

First, mark the upper and lowermost holes to the panels, between the two boning channels. The uppermost hole is 1 cm down from the upper edge of your stays at both front and back. If you've got a front lacing, you can mark the lowermost hole 1 cm away from the lower edge at the front as well. However, at the back the lacing doesn't go all the way down because it isn't necessary. There you mark the lowermost hole at the waist line because you don't need lacing below that. That usually means the spot shown in the diagram below (1.).

Next follows the crucial part in getting the sides of your stays to meet evenly at the back. On the left side of your stays, mark a hole 1 cm away from the lowermost hole and, on the right side, mark one 1 cm away from the uppermost hole (2.).

Then it's time to figure out how many lacing holes you want your stays to have on each side of the back. From 48 extant stays with photos of their backs from my Pinterest, the majority had either 10 (9), 12 (11) or 13 (8) holes but the range was from 7 to 15 holes.

From counting the amount of lacing holes of extant stays with front lacing, I got the range from 6 to 10 with the majority at 8 (6 stays from 12 altogether).*

*I didn't take 1780s partial front lacings, stays with stomachers nor very short 1790s stays into count.

Generally, two things have an effect on how many lacing holes you're going to need:
the distance between your waist and bust line (i.e. the length of the front and back panels of your stays), and - how far from each other you're going to place your holes.

Upon my experience, I would say it's best to place your lacing holes approximately 2,5-2,7 cm away from each other. 3 cm or more is pretty far and 2 cm is pretty close so you'll end up having to stitch more lacing holes and requiring a longer lacing string. Plus, more lacing holes means you're going to spend more time lacing yourself into your stays.

Measure the distance between your marked lacing holes as shown in the diagram below (3.) and divide the distance with 10 in case you want to have 12 holes like I did. (with 11 if you want to have 13 holes and so forth...) I got 2,45 cm this time, which was, as explained, a desirable distance between the lacing holes.

 The last thing to do is to mark the rest of the lacing holes (4.). ;)

Then it's time to stitch your lacing holes. Of course, if I was more true to the "speedy" theme here, I could use metal eyelets but I tend to prefer hand-stitched lacing holes nowadays simply because a) they look accurate and b) it's actually quite fast to make them with the right materials and tools.

You will need to get an awl to make the holes. Preferably a tapered one, unlike mine.

In case you want larger holes than mine you can also try to gently stretch them. Or just make your life easier and get that tapered awl. ;)

Using buttonhole thread, whip-stitch around the hole. Please don't attempt to try to use your regular sewing thread! It will just make the process slower and your lacing holes will be less pretty. Been there, done that, unfortunately...

The first lacing hole done!

Then just keep repeating...

...and repeating...

...until you're done. :)

Below you can also watch an eyelet making video by Burnley & Trowbridge.

After finishing the eyelets, move on to cutting the lining from linen. The lining consists out of four pieces + shoulder straps (+ tabs, if you're doing this the proper way) + a small additional piece(s), as to be explained. Preferably, place the seam in the the middle of your stays as seen in the photo in the link. I cut the lining by using the pattern for the stays but you could also simply lay your stays on the linen and cut around the edges and trim the edges as you go (that's easier and faster if your making an earlier type of stays that lays flat on the floor since it's quite straight without the swooping bust shaping of the 1780s as here). Notice that it's best that you don't cut the parts between the tabs yet, just like earlier.

After cutting the lining pieces, start by pinning your front piece to your stays with the seam allowances turned under and the edges left raw. As you can see from the photo, I already stitched the upper edge of the lining to the stays by machine.

Then stitch the piece around the rest of the edges and whip stitch the turned-under seam allowances to the stays by hand. After the front piece is added, pin the back piece of the lining and repeat the same process as with the front piece. Notice it might be easier for you to to stitch around the tabs by hand with long stitches than with the machine.

Then cut a small piece for the part where the panels of the stays overlap and that you therefore couldn't cut as one with the lining piece. Also, add the lining to the straps. You can easily stitch it around the edges with the machine again. It looks I forgot to take a photo of this part of the construction but it's straightforward enough for you to do without. :)

Then we move on to the last bit that almost everybody says they hate the most when making stays because stays have tabs and they're tricky and binding them makes your fingers sore. I've previously shared some tips about the binding on the blog but I'm not going to assume you've read them or that  you still remember them... so here we go with some tips to make the binding easier for you.

First and foremost, do not attempt to try to use a wide binding tape. The wider, the worse it gets. If you're using precut bias tape, it should be the narrowest kind available (which, I believe, is the 1 cm width). It's going to take quite a bit of skill and patience to get the 1,5 cm wide bias tape beautifully bound around the edges of your stays so spare yourself and don't try to do it. Again, been there, done that. A wider type of binding material simply doesn't end up looking as good as a narrower binding. If you already haven't, take a look at extant 18th century stays and you will notice that the bindings on them are quite narrow and that is for a reason. Anyone who has been making 18th century costumes for a while, has probably also learned that bias tape isn't accurate either (I recommend getting Costume Close-Up  by Linda Baumgarten for more information on this).

At the moment my favorite binding material is 7 mm wide twill tape because it's stretchy so it's easy to get smoothly and beautifully bound around the edges. I also like to start stitching the binding from the inside of the stays because that way you have more control over your binding material later when your binding is already intact on the inside. Plus, you can use more generous and faster stitches on the inside of your stays so you can spare the tiny, beautiful stitches for the outside.


I would advise to stitch the binding completely by hand because it's just much more manageable by hand than by machine - especially if you're a beginner and it's hard for you to stitch very precise parts by machine.

Thirdly, I think the square types of tabs are easier to bind than the rounded ones because you can simply fold the binding at the corners of your square tabs instead of having to gather the binding slightly to get past the round parts smoothly. But I believe this is just a personal preference so you might feel like the rounded tabs are just as easy. However, it seems the rounded tabs are more popular among people who have made 18th century stays simply because popular sewing pattern and guidebooks such as Corsets and Crinolines and Period Costume for Stage and Screen feature them, regardless of the fact on extant stays the square or squarish types of tabs seem to be more common.

For comparison, below is an image with some tabs and bindings that I've used previously. The first is 1 cm wide cotton bias tape on the squarish tabs of my brown KCI stays. While it looks good, it kind of looks a bit off. The binding has definitely started to bug me since this pair of stays took probably the longest for me to make and yet they don't look as perfect as they could. I think it's mainly caused by the binding. It's simply too wide for 18th century, even if the visible part is only 5mm. The second photo on the left shows round tabs with the same material and width so the same problem applies to them. Notice the gathering on the round parts. On the third photo on the upper right we have the same binding material and width again but the tabs are square tabs so the binding is folded over the corners. The last, below right photo shows a pair of stays that I made before any of the other stays seen here, with 1,5 cm polyester satin bias tape. I think that's actually pretty decent work considering how I hadn't been sewing for a very long time at this point yet, but it's definitely a bit uglier than the other bindings. Round tabs + polyester satin + 1,5 cm width isn't an accurate looking combination at all.

And below you can see how much better the narrow binding looks!

And then there's the one last thing to do: adding the lacing holes for the ribbons that hold the shoulder straps and front panels in place.

After that... Congratulations, you're done! :) I hope this tutorial was helpful!

Photos of the finished stays on a mannequin can be found in this separate blog post.

Brown floral print gown at the Ehrensvärd museum

I don't know if you still remember but earlier I mentioned an outfit that I couldn't finish on time for the Isokyrö event in August. Well, now it's done, but I only finished it a couple of days ago - so it was more than three months late for the original deadline. The dress would propably still be unfinished by now if I hadn't set a new deadline for it for this year's Christmas ball. Originally I had planned to wear the same dress as last year and make the naval riding habit for a parade preceding the ball but obviously it didn't happen as I'm behind on pretty much everything regarding to sewing (and blogging, too...). Alright, on to the new dress! 

I've always loved the white floral print gowns from the 1770s/1780s but they are so very common so wanted something a bit different for myself. After discovering some floral gowns in darker fabrics through museums collections I knew I had to have one like them some day. It took a couple of years but then earlier this year I managed to find a Moda print fabric through Herzwerk-Freiburg that was even more lovely than I had hoped for. The fabric was nearly out of print everywhere so I ended up ordering from three different sources to have enough of it.

For the bodice and sleeves I used a robe à l'Anglaise pattern from The Cut of Women's Clothes by Norah Waugh (see diagram XXII). Working the same way as I always do, I enlarged the scale pattern on the computer and printed it out. However, this pattern turned not to work easily for me and the fact that I had to make quite a few mock-ups with so many alterations delayed the completion of this gown. Also, it didn't help that the fabric stretched a bit more than I had imagined and the stretch of the mock-up fabric was also different... I swear I've never had so much trouble fitting sleeves as with this dress (I guess I only now truly understand the meaning of sleevils ;) ). Not having made sleeves like this earlier I wasn't even sure how they were supposed fit/look but I think they turned out to be alright in the end.  

To upgrade the look of a brown day gown into a dress suitable for a ball I added some red accessories, using the same ear rings as last year and the belt that I have worn with pretty much every fitted back gown that I have.

 I also intended to make a matching petticoat from the same fabric for this dress but decided to use a sheer white petticoat this time to further enhance the evening gown look and leave the self fabric petticoat for day wear occasions. I'm probably going to wear this dress at the 18th century fair of Isokyrö next year so the brown color of the matching petticoat should be much better for outdoors than the delicate white. The skirt of the dress will also be draped up to avoid the slight train from dragging in ground.

The dress has a tight fitting quarter back but the floral pattern of the fabric conceals the seamlines so you can't see much of them here. I'm actually really happy with the fit of the back since the back of this gown fits more smoothly than the back of my earlier quarter back gown that had wrinkles all over it. There's also a slight train but I made a cutting mistake and it ended up being shorter than I had intented. Looking at the photos, I notice that the train isn't even either - it is longer at the sides of the center back than in the very center. But right now I don't care. Especially because I want to make a divided bum pad like Aubry of A Fractured Fairytale did or at least a bum pad with a dip at the center back, which should fix that problem. 

My hairdo was created by Mia, a new friend who traveled with me to the ball for her first time. I feel so lucky that I now have a friend who understands sewing and lives permanently in my hometown! Meeting her has been one of the best things in the past few months and the fact that I met her through my blog helped me to get over my blogging anxieties that have partly kept me away from posting for a while. It reminded me again that there are quite a few lovely people that I might have never met if I didn't have this blog...

All of these photos are also taken by Mia, at the Ehrensvärd museum that you might have already recognized from last year's Christmas ball posts. For some reason (read: because we were too busy doing last minute sewing) we forgot to check the museum opening hours and the museum was just closing as we arrived there. But the museum guide was kind enough to let us take a few photos before leaving. :)

Here's Augustin Ehrensvärd himself up in the middle with Noora and I posing next to him. 

And last but certainly not least, Mia wearing Noora's floral robe à l'Anglaise.

18th century fair of Isokyro

This post is coming really, really late but at least I'm trying to catch up on blogging because I've been gone for too long. Instead of writing about all aspects of this lovely weekend in August I'm simply going to give you a short tour around our little booth at the 18th century fair of Isokyrö since - apart from meeting friends from far - it was the focus of my trip.

Below: Maija of Couture Mayah on the left and Noora of The Shadow of My Hand on the right welcoming you at the booth.

Here's Hanna preparing for the weekend at our booth on Friday after arriving in Isokyrö.  As you will be able to tell from my photos, we had all sorts of historical and contemporary fashion items for sale.

Noora arranging her things on Saturday...

A couple of bum pads were hung from the ceiling. ;)

Noora had also made some cute garters and mitts for sale. 

You could also buy L'Amusette's calendar for 2015 at the booth. It has got breathtakingly amazing photos inspired by some famous 18th century paintings. 

More people from our booth group: Emilia and Ida.

Our booth sign, made by Maija and Hanna. Isn't it just adorable? :)

Here's one portion of the market place on Friday. Also, you could see glimpses of the Old Church of Isokyrö in my last post and here it is again in the background.

And then the same place again on Saturday (photo taken looking from the church towards the opposite direction than the photo above)... 

The church made a wonderful background for photos so of course we took many pictures in front of it. Here's a favorite.

Also, I got a punishment for being so indecently dressed. 

On Sunday Noora lent her jacket to me. (You can't go to a church mass in your underwear, right?!) We had not realized that we were almost the same size until this... so at the moment I'm borrowing her pattern for this jacket as I had been planning to make one as well.

In case you want to read more about this event (and see more photos) head over to The Shadow of My Hand.

A visit to a local museum

A week ago I finally went to see a small local museum that I've been meaning to visit for ages but never got around to go there. It's called Sailor's Home Museum and it's located in a building that was built in the 1730s. The rooms of the house are furnished in 1880s style to represent a sailor's home and tenant's quarters. Because I actually ought to be sewing for an event that's only two weeks from now, I'm simply going to share my photos from the museum without much further introduction.

We'll start with the tenant's quarters...

The wallpapers of the house were probably my favorite part from the museum. They were beautiful and I also loved that they weren't all perfect and spotless but they were partly crumpled on the walls and had imperfections in the matching of the papers.

Two of the rooms in the house also had painted walls instead of wallpapers.

The blue bed chamber was my favorite, of course! ;)

A close-up of the lovely wallpaper...

And here's the building from the outside...

The visit to the museum was nice although it was a very short one since I was there with someone who is almost not at all interest in history and who doesn't have much understanding nor appreciation for photography either. This is unfortunately not the first time I get reminded that you really should always go to a museum who is as much interested in seeing it as you... and who has the patience to wait for you to take as many photos as you like so you don't have to take them hastily...

The next post will be about sewing, I swear! ;)

Similarities...

This following fashion plate has appeared on my Pinterest feed quite a few times over the past couple of days and I guess many of you, who have already seen the said fashion plate and spent a lot of time browsing the pages of The Cut of Women's Clothes by Norah Waugh, have noticed that the cut of the dress depicted in it looks quite close to one of the patterns in the book (see diagram XXXII). It's a pity London Museum doesn't have photos of the original garment, that the pattern was taken from, on their online collections so we can't compare the fashion plate with it.

Journal des Luxus, December 1795.

This fashion plate also reminds of a quite similar dress (in cut) in a painting by Louis Léopold Boilly (below).

At the entrance (1796-1798), by Louis Léopold Boilly.

Why am I bringing this up on the blog, then? Mainly, just out of the joy of sharing and, secondly, because I find the raising waistlines of the 1790's very appealing and would love to sew a gown similar in style to these dresses in the future. This is something I'm only dreaming about so therefore it's not going to happen any day soon. But I wanted to write a brief post abut it anyway since the dresses of this type were definitely on my mind when I began to sew my pair of transitional stays that I think would work wonderfully for something like these gowns, with rising waists and gathered fronts.

Now, who's tempted to buy that fashion plate from Ebay? ;)

Transitional stays c. 1794-1800, chemise and under-petticoat

Here come the photos of the first garments that I've actually finished this year. It's such a relief to get something done completely because my projects haven't exactly gone smoothly in the past four months, which has resulted in leaving me with more UFOs than, well, ever before. That's also why I didn't post anything for a while, but I guess that happens to most of us sometimes, right? :)

Let's start with having a look at the front of the stays. I'm actually really happy I put more bones into the front panels of the stays than in the original pattern because I'm almost certain that there would be more creasing if I hadn't done so. Plus, the extra bones support the bust from below without making the stays any less comfortable. Should I ever make another pair of stays with this pattern, I might place the cups slightly closer to the center front because it's just not possible for my breasts to be quite this far apart - even if the aim is to get that separation effect. The issue doesn't really show much on the photos and I'm quite sure you can't tell once I'm wearing a gown on top of the stays so right now I'm just going to stick with this pair. Also, adding more width to the lower part of the cups might help with the creasing that you can see at the front.

Now we can also compare the results with a period engraving which is actually around ten years later than my transitional stays - but the shape that the stays provide looks basically the same, doesn't it?

The Ladies' Dress Maker, from "Book of English Trades", 1811.

The shape of the cups is controlled on top with drawstrings that run under the twill tape binding. 

Maybe you already noticed that there are actually modern underwires under the cups to support the breasts. Since it looks like there are bones under the cups of the trasitional stays on the MET, I thought I might get away with using them. :)

Unfortunately the photos of the back of the stays were unsuccessful so I'll have to try to get photos of it some other time and add them to the blog later. :/ 

I also made a under-petticoat. At first I wanted to make a bodiced petticoat but then, I really liked the petticoat Merja made for her riding habit, and eventually decided to leave the bodice out so that I wouldn't have to worry about the length of it. I actually didn't sew the shoulder straps into the waist tape of the petticoat at front either - they are only pinned so I can adjust the back depending on how high or low it should be. 

The front of the petticoat is almost triangular so that the petticoat gets wider towards the hem and there's no gathering at waist, which helps to create a smooth figure without making you look like you're larger than you actually are. 

The back is gathered to the waist tape only in the middle, but not on sides. 

And finally, here's the side view.

The petticoat is a bit too long so I will probably have to make it shorter by making a tuck at the hem but after that I'm ready to move on! :)

Fabrics (and cars)

The transitional stays are finished now, along with a new regency chemise, and I'm now eagerly waiting for a chance to photograph them. In the meanwhile, I thought I'd share photos of some exciting fabric purchases.

Thanks to Hertzwerk-Freiburg, I was able to get enough of this pretty floral print cotton with a brown background (something I've tried to find for a while now) to make a dark floral robe à l'Anglaise out of. I'm hoping to get the dress done by August.

The next cotton fabric will turn into an early 1810s gown - very soon, I believe. This is the fabric that has been kicking me to get those regency undies done.

And the following fabric is actually polyester taffeta but at -70% discount I couldn't pass, so I bought six meters for 21 euros and have no regrets. It's a very nice quality and will eventually become a late 1780s/early 1790s robe à l'Anglaise... with a vandyke collar.. maybe... I haven't really decided yet because, in all probability, it's not happening this year.

In case you're not interested in seeing some old cars, you may stop reading this post now... ;)