Stays,
2013
Having made four pairs of stays for
myself I finally had the courage to begin a pair for a friend.
Well, actually I still felt kinda unsure about my skills for
fitting stays but as my friend Ida's old, much worn pair was
almost falling apart I had to try. The last pair I had made
for myself had been so easy that it was actually good to get
to work with something more challenging.
Ida's old stays were originally made as a court dress
bodice for another person, and ended up to her in somewhat
altered form which laced over a stomacher. Ida wanted the new
stays also be fully boned like it, but happily she was okay with
a fancy top material disguising the channels, which would save a
lot of work in sewing them. She also wanted to keep the wide
front lacing, which was quite welcome to the still rather
inexperienced staymaker as it gives ample fitting allowance. Ida
did not want a back lacing, as she wanted the stays to look more
bodice-like so that she could use it in pastoral inspired
dancing costumes. The lazy staymaker also agreed on this as it
would save the trouble of second set of lacing eyelets.

Drafting the pattern
The project began by
trying on Ida's old stays and deciding what to alter. As
previously mentioned, it had originally been made for another
person, and as Ida had laced it tighter the back was now too
wide and the side front pieces came too far forward so that the
bust was not supported enough at the sides. The front in general
could well come higher too. The waist could also be a bit
narrower.
The stays had an even center back piece which narrowed
towards waist and a wide side / side front piece with a hidden
side seam with some shaping in the boned layer. I ended up
drafting a new pattern based on the stays with three pieces and
a stomacher, like the one I have used for my front laced stays.
I've had good results with it and understand how it works.

I drafted the
center front piece based on the old stays, only making it a few
centimeters narrower at the center back line. On the side piece
I drafted a slanted seam from the side of the lacing on the
waist to underarm, thus creating a separate side-front piece.
Then I curved the side piece in between so that the waist was
reduced by 3 cm, and drafted new tabs.
The old stays were boned on 5mm steel boning all over, and Ida
wished similar boning on the new pair. I had boned my
first pair of stays on steel, and had much trouble
finishing the bone ends so that they would not break through the
fabric, so at first I was very reluctant to begin a fully boned
pair with steel boning. Happily our resourceful friend Riikka
had in her stash both lots of inexpensive steel boning and metal
caps for the ends. She also taught me how to fasten the metal
caps fast and securely using two pliers.
Planning boning layout for fully boned stays required some
effort. As they would not show on the finished stays I could
cheat a little of course, but it still took me some time and
many drafts before I had final patterns for them.

I followed the old stays in the center back piece and the
side-front pieces. The side front piece has bones on each side
of the front lacing and the rest of the bones are parallel to
the side seam. On the back the bones are parallel to the center
back until they hit the edge of the tab in the waist, the rest
of the bones follow the side-back seam. The center back piece is
split into two wide tabs at the waist. The bone at the center
ends at the top of the tab so that there is some unboned
allowance left for binding.
I also shaped the side-back seam a bit, adding 5mm at the waist
on both pieces. It both gives the binding allowance for tabs and
at least in my stays a bit more comfortable fit.
The front and back usually go easy, but the side piece has
proved tricky before, and this time was no exception. The wide
side piece I was dealing with now seemed to require quite a
complicated boning layout, so I decided to simplify matters a
bit by separating an extra side-back piece like in my
light blue stays. I placed the boning channels parallel to
the seams, meeting at the middle, leaving binding allowances at
the tab edges. As the seam was straight I decided later to cut
the top layer as a single piece, however.

In the first mock version
on the light blue stays I had tried boned tabs with the bones
ending at waist like in period stays. It did not work at all,
but I reasoned back then that in fully boned stays with narrow,
dense boning it might work better. Thus I decided to give it
another try on Ida's mock up, because that's what mock ups are
for, really. My personal favorite was the technique introduced
to me by Sanna K. from Rococo Atelier,
where the tab bones are extented far beyond waistline where they
cross the long bones - that way they support each other and
there is no sharp angles at the waistline. But of course, it
does not work in fully boned stays.

Anyway, I was still
somewhat sceptical about the short tab boning, so I decided to
try something else on the other side of the mock up. After
browsing through my sources I picked the mid-century stays in
Norah Waughs "The Cut of Women's Clothes 1600-1900". It has a
side-front piece very similar to mine, and the side piece has
two bones parallel to the side-front seam, and the rest are
vertical continuing down to the tabs. Some of the vertical
boning might be a bit tricky to insert as the bones next to the
seam close it, but otherways it seemed sensible so I decided to
choose it for my second boning option. On the most angled tabs I
added a few small bones. As usual with period stays, the boning
is much narrower that what you can get nowadays, so that alters
the boning layout a bit.

The first mock up version included almost
all the vertical bones but no horizontal ones yet. Jarno was
great help in cutting the boning while I put the end caps on.
The first mock up version had a back lacing for adjustment,
and we tried it on with the old stomacher.
The mock up was rather
good, with a few alterations of course. The higher front edge
gave more support to the bust and the stays created a nice
cone-shaped silhouette. According to Ida it also felt
comfortable enough.
As I had anticipated,
the side piece with the tab bones ending at waist was the one
uncomfortable part, it looked like the bones might stab the
waist soon and also created an uneven, sharp line at the
waist. I'm not sure where the problem lies exactly, whether
it's the bone width, steel versus baleen or just something in
the boning layout, but it just didn't work. The other side
with vertical boning was much more comfortable, but as the
steel did not bend much there was not much curve at the waist.
Anyway, it seemed the better option of the two so we decided
to go with it.

The narrower back piece supported the
back better and gave more moving allowance for the arms, but
on the waist there was a 3cm lacing gap. Thus I ended up
widening the pattern at the waist and drawing the boning
channels anew. With the narrower back the original shoulder
strap had to be reshaped a bit too. On the front it looked
like the side front top with the shoulder strap eyelet could
be just a bit higher still, and this time it seemed go too far
on the side and chafe the arm, and not quite cover the
stomacher at the top. As the waist was okay I decided to add a
very moderate 1,5cm curve on the top of the side front seam
like on the stays from the last quarter of the century to give
more room for the bust.
And no, unfortunately
I don't have any pictures of this mock up on Ida. While I
realise it would have been much more informative than just my
rambling I didn't come to think of it at the time.

On the next mock up I added the extra
bits on the side front piece, made a new complete back piece
without lacing and the second side piece with vertical boning.
The vertical
boning in the sides was clearly better, but even in this option
some bones ended midway the tab and stabbed poor Ida on the hip.
On the other hand random bones ending above the waistline didn't
give any trouble as long as there were other full length bones
around to support them. So I decided to make yet another plan
for the side piece boning. This time I placed them a little
apart so that each bone either ended just over the tab slit or
reached the bottom of the tab. Needless to say, this cheat would
be out of the question with visible boning channels more typical
for the fully boned stays, but as I did not have all the time in
the world at the moment to dedicate myself to searching the
mysteries of 18th century staymaking I decided with Ida's
blessing that this solution was good enough for now.
While trying out
different boning options I realized that in the original stays
the tabs were cut to continue straight on the boning direction,
meeting at the hidden side seam, which enabled the boning to
continue all the way down. I had reshaped the tabs which forced
me to go for other boning options, but as Ida liked the new
style of tabs so I decided to keep them and cheat with the
boning instead.

Sewing the stays
Beginning the real stays was postponed further because I had
managed to break my last feed dog when assembling the mock up in
hurry (never sew over a steel bone!), and I had to wait for a
new one to arrive. The good thing in that was that for once I
made all the preparations with care instead of rushing to begin
and then get annoyed when I'd have to clear the table for
cutting something while I wanted to get on with the thing.
This time I cut the lining, traced the patterns and boning
channels on coutil, cut and pressed the bias tape for the
binding and other necessary stuff beforehand. When I finally got
the feed dog I could just sit down and start stitching.
Stitching the boning channels went surprisingly fast as they
didn't have to look hand sewn.
I joined the side piece and the side-back piece to a single one,
pressed the seam allowances open and stitched them down. Then I
began to insert the boning on those and other pieces.
Like mentioned earlier, the mock ups had already had most of the
vertical boning cut by Jarno, but with the fitting alterations
some boning channels and bone lengths had changed a bit. I had
also left the side piece bones uncapped yet anticipating
changes. As we had tried the mock ups on with the old stomacher
I did not have the stomacher bones yet either. And what's more,
even though I had tried to be very precise in tracing the boning
channels some of the diagonal ones had somehow mysteriously
ended up different length on each side.

I began removing the bones from the mock up in pairs, inserting
those that still fit. Pretty soon I ended up with a heap on
homeless bones, and began to try where they would fit if not the
channel originally intended for them. After some considerable
time I had managed to cap and insert almost all of the already
cut bones, at times trimming them a bit or cutting them into
several shorter ones. For the last thing I took out the rest of
the boning and cut the ones I still needed, mostly for the
stomacher, and the horizontal ones to be added later.
All this fuss with
the boning took quite much time, and once again I was reminded
of the old truth of the first piece being almost the hardest: If
I had worked with a ready pattern without preparing for any
alterations I could have measured, cut, cap and insert the
boning effectively at the same time, which would have gone much
faster. Well, maybe next time.
The finished stays have in total 141 bones and about 27,6 metres
of steel boning.

I closed the boning
channels with a stitching at the edges and a few centimetres
lower at the underarm. Then I placed the boned coutil pieces on
the top fabric. The top fabric Ida had chosen was a bargain
piece of a beautiful cream-gold brokade, probably polyester. As
it seemed very eager to fray I had tried to put an iron-on
interfacing on it, but it simply refused to stay on the satin
underside so I gave up.
The brocade piece was so short that I had to resort to piecing.
At first I thought of back piece waist, but then realised that
on stomacher it would hide quite well under the lacing.
I joined the base and the
top material on the front lacing edge and on other edges just
stitched pieces of the top material with ample allowances on the
top of the boned base. On the seams I trimmed the allowances to
1cm and neatened them with zig zag, again to keep the material
from fraying.

Next came the lacing
eyelets. Usually I tend to make eyelets on bus or coffee breaks
during a longer period of time, but due to the impending ball I
now made them during a few days.
Then it was time to move on to the back. I joined the center
back piece to the side pieces, sewed the shoulder straps on and
bound the seam allowances down by hand.

I had cut separate coutil
tubes for the horizontal boning and stitched the edges and ends.
I pinned them on and sewed them on the boned base. It was quite
heavy work, but made a bit easier when I finally came to think
of a curved needle.
On the stomacher I added
three horizontal bones at the top and two lower. For them I used
wider boning left over from my pocket hoops. I also added a few
short bones on the side-front piece top to further support the
bust.

When there was
nothing more to do for the individual pieces I joined the
side-front piece on too. On the joining seams I used heavier
thread and sewed them with two rows of stitching. I used zipper
foot but nevertheless I couldn't get the stitching right next to
the boning channels, but a few millimeters extra room would not
hurt.
I had in past clipped the
seam allowances on the tabs even where the tab slit originates
from a joining seam, but already in my last pair I had
experimented with extending the allowances down the tab slit and
just turning them under. I did so now too, reasoning that it
would make the construction more durable.

Now the stays were a single piece (save the stomacher of
course), and with all the boning it began to be quite stiff and
heavy to handle. Next I made the linen lining and pinned it on.
I stitched the edges through all layers, which began to be a
challenge even for my industrial machine because of the
thickness. The bottom layer was easily caught on the feed dog
ridges on the sharp turnings on the tab slits and wrinkled.
Finally I was able to trim the edges and open the tab slits,
just leaving some fitting allowance still on the side front top.
I have usually reinforced the edges with blanket stitch under
the binding, but due to the schedule I now decided to try and
zig zag them too. The top edge was easy, and I got around the
bottom edge too though I had to turn the heavy and stiff stays a
lot. While handworked blanket stitch goes quite fast machine is
of course always faster so I may use this trick again. Of course
I still did some extra reinforcing by hand on the tab slit ends.
Now it was time to try the stays on for the first time. At this
point there wouldn't be much possibility for alterations,
though. Unfortunately, as I maybe should have been able to
anticipate, the stays had ended up just a bit smaller than the
mock up as the material was thicker and did not give in under
strain. This caused the side-front top edge digging into arm
again. I reshaped it narrower as much as I could without
touching the boning. The stomacher was also a bit narrow at the
top edge, so I decided to add small extra pieces at the sides,
which would pretty much be hidden under the lacing edges.
Otherways the stays seemed to fit nicely.
For the binding I used thick off-white
satin, leftovers from a wedding dress I had made for a friend. I
cut and joined the bias strips in a hurry and only when pressing
them I realized that I had joined them without paying any
attention to the weave direction. I reshaped the ends on many of
them and joined most anew, so that in the end I had a long piece
of bias tape with almost invisible piecing. Well, at least I
learned well how to make satin bias tape!

I bound the bottom edge by
hand but tried to make the top edge on machine this time. As
the edges were so thick my stitching line missed the underside
edge of the tape at some places, but I finished those by hand.
For the last thing I made lacing eyelets on the shoulder
straps and the neckline sides.
Up to this point
I had made the stays with great care and precision, especially
as it was made for someone else, but as often happens, towards
the deadline the hurry and also exhaustion tempt one to cut
corners. This is especially true when you have to begin fixing
your mistakes. Thus the extra pieces on the stomacher top are
not very neat, especially on the underside. The re-made binding
is not that great either, happily it doesn't show when the stays
are on.
Ida tried the stays on quickly on Tuesday
on the of the ball. She felt they were a bit tight at the
waist but thought it was just about her skirt waist being
crumbled underneath or stomach swelling, and promised to try
them on with more time at home. The next day she was convinced
that they really were too tight. As it would be a masked ball,
Ida would wear the stays visible in a pastoral fashion, and
obviously the petticoat and under-petticoat waist took just a
bit too much room under the already tight stays. So, the one
thing left to do was to rip off the stomacher binding again,
find the last scraps of the material and widen the bottom edge
too.

I was rather unenthusiastic about
touching the formerly neat stomacher, but happily the few
extra centimetres were enough for a more comfortable lacing.
When I arrived on the event site on Saturday I met a happy
laced Ida who assured me she wouldn't be likely to faint.
Unlike at the top, the extra pieces on on the bottom edge show
when the stays are on, but happily the lacing disguises them
somewhat. Normally the stays are hidden under other clothing,
of course, and then the comfort is the main thing.

On the afterthought I realized that we
had tried on the mock up stays with the stomacher from the old
stays, which had seemed convenient at the time. Then I had
just cut the new stomacher to match the size of the finished
old one, not considering that the boning would shrink it
considerably. I was also generally not prepared for the space
the boning, even in slim steel would take in fully boned
stays. Another thing I'm beginning to learn is that when using
coutil you can't count on the stays stretching after wearing
them a few times, as they do with some inferior materials.
I'm still annoyed about making the
stomacher too small in the beginning, as it would have been so
easy to make wider in the first place. I think I was trying to
avoid the opposite problem I've had in the past, especially
with my red
silk stays, that is the too wide stomacher peeking out
between the front tabs. Anyway, I learned some valuable
lessons here.

Conclusion
Apart from the size issues and the
stomacher fiasco I'm quite happy with the stays. It's always a
bit exciting to sew for another person, especially stays which
are hard to fit and often only show their true nature when
worn. Estimating the right amount of tightness and support is
also difficult when you can't feel it yourself. The ideal way
would of course have been to make a mock up pair on a sturdier
material and have Ida wear it for a few times, but now the
schedule forced to get on the sewing stage quickly. On the
other hand, the first stays are seldom perfect.
Fully boned stays were and interesting project. For an 18th
century costumer they are in a way a thing that has to be done
at least once, and honestly I have to admit that I wouldn't
have been in a hurry to make them for myself, so it's a good
thing I was talked into it. Okay, in a way a fabric covered
fully boned stays are bit of a cheat, but apart from the side
piece the boning patterns are quite neat and could be left
visible if they were only stitched more carefully. The side
piece boning still remains a mystery to me, though, but I may
be crazy enough to return to it some day.

Personally I'm still not a fan of steel boning on 18th
century, though the steel caps and learning the technique of
inserting them made working with them a great deal easier. Time
will show if they wear the edges or not. I still think steel is
too stiff and doesn't bend enough at the waist, though I must
admit that it supports a fuller bust very well. Steel boning
also keeps the front profile straight unlike the plastic which
curves outwards with your belly, but then again the period
solution for this was a wide wooden or steel busk at the front.
With this project I actually grew very interested about the
mysteries of fully boned stays, and even though I don't feel
that I need a maximum amount of support or tightlacing myself I
may experiment more with it them the future, perhaps with my
distant dream of a French court dress...