Very sorry for the serious lack of west-coast entries lately.
My "real" job has been all-consuming for the last couple of months.
Whatever.
On to pretty things, like these STAYS I'm almost finished with!
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Yes, I know, Simplicity patterns are not historically accurate blah, blah. blah....
Yes, I know about JP Ryan, Mill Farm, and alllll the others being the "better" patterns for this era...I get it....I angsted over it, then moved on.
But, I went with the Simplicity pattern for 2 very good reasons:
1.) I saw decent reviews and pictures of this pattern all made up on Patternreview.com that can be seen here. Not bad! And since this is my first attempt at anything stay-like, I figured it was a decent starting point.
2.) Making even the simplest of corsets/stays cost MONEY. Even if you have a pattern & fabric on-hand, the boning and additional tools needed can set you back. ESPECIALLY if you wanna get crazy like I did and do "fully boned" stays with hand sewn eyelets.
I used 2 layers of tightly woven khaki twill...the exact same kind used to make chino/khaki pants.
Only 2 layers? Seems thin for a corset you say?? Well, let me tell you, this shit is deceptively bulletproof! Hand sewing on this fabric is a real bitch, but in a good way, because I know its STRONG!
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| The Front & Side Front Pieces, after stitch all channels for boning. |
Later, when the stays are all done, I will hand-stitch a plain muslin lining inside to make it extra smooth & comfy.
All channels for the boning are topstitched in rose pink thread. With a bias tape maker, I created my own binding out of a rose printed cotton. I really dig how the khaki and warm pink harmonize together.
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| Front & Side Front pieces, with boning inserted and bottom edge finished with binding. As you can see, I'm having a hard time getting that binding to lay flat where the self fabric is split to form the tab... I will work that out later. I decided to finish the binding on each piece before joining them together, after seeing *real* stays constructed that way. |
The boning I used is actually 3/8"-ish wide zip ties specifically designed to hold AC ducts together. They are sold at Home Depot with the Air Conditioning supplies. *Pls note: These are NOT the same as regular zip ties. They are slightly thicker, and much stronger. Plus they are a whopping 40-something inches long and sold in a pack of 25 for like, 13 bucks. I used over half the pack to full bone all the channels properly!
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| Front & Side Front pieces with zip tie "boning" sticking out. IMPORTANT: All edges of boning were carefully cut to have a rounded edge in an effort to keep from poking through.. You can see the imprint of the rounded edge through the fabric. I made sure the smooth side of the zip ties faced outwards for consistantcy. |
I must admit, my whole life, I've been totally intimidated by the idea of making thread eyelets. They just looked really, really hard to do. Well, with this project, I was able to conquer that fear, and now I LOVE them!
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| ADVENTURES IN EYLETS! The other part of this project I had to spend money on: Japanese silk buttonhole thread and a good tapered awl make the process vertually painless! Since 18th c. stays lace up a special way with just one tie, eyelets at the top and bottom need to be offset for the center front to line up properly. I sewed the offset eyelets with pink thread to highlight them for this post...and lets face it, they look pretty too! |
Because this is 2011, and I need to be able to get dressed all by myself!
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| Lookin' good! |
That's it for now!
Hopefully my next post will show off the finished stays!
-Kathleen, In Oakland
