18th Century Stays - Part 1 - The Pattern

Hello everyone!

So this is my first costuming blog post, and I am really excited to start documenting my trials and adventures with sewing. I decided that my first series of posts would be for the first real HA (historically accurate) sewing project I ever did....which is stays.

To be honest, when I told people I was making a pair of stays for my first 18th century project, I got some very interesting responses. Most people thought I was crazy. I decided to make my own stays because of three reasons:

1. Necessity - I didn't have a pair that fit.
2. I didn't want to pay someone to make them for me.
3. Go hard or go home, right?

When I first started this project, I was more than a little terrified. Stays, to me, were the hardest thing to make - they have to be fitted to your exact measurements and be comfortable at the same time. I'd never made anything before that point that was so carefully constructed. So naturally, I was pretty nervous at the start.

Another thing that was daunting for me was the fact that I was not a small individual. I was about a size 14-16 (standard-wise) when I started making my stays, and my bust is rather...ample. I had some worries as a larger woman whether my stays would fit and give me the correct shape too.

Now, in hindsight, I think making stays first was the best thing I could have done for myself, sewing-wise.

The first few things I did, before I started buying anything, was research. I Googled tons of stays tutorials, I saved buttloads of Pinterest pins with extant examples - including pictures of deconstructed stays, and I read. A lot. I figured if I was going to make stays, I wanted to try and be historically accurate as I can (while staying within a reasonable budget).

One of the goals I have for my projects is not only to make pretty and relatively HA pieces, but save money making them. So during the project, I also searched for materials that were as HA as possible, but less expensive. I'll take about that later.

(Please excuse the crappy lighting in my photos - I didn't have good lighting sources in my room at the time and I took the photos with my phone)

So, the first thing to do was find a pattern. I managed to find an online (and FREE) stays pattern from www.ralphpink.com. It is a Half-Boned Stays pattern with front and back lacing, and the illustration showed it closed with a busk in the front...so really not historically accurate, at least not for 18th century. But I used this with the goal in mind to make it more accurate. It was a one-size pattern, a UK size 8...which is about a US size 6...which wasn't even close to my size. But I liked the shoulder straps option it had, plus it was front and back lacing, which I prefer in my own stays. So of course, there was some redrafting to be done, but it was a great jumping off point.

One blog post that was INCREDIBLY helpful with re-drafting was "Fitting The Pattern" by La Couturiere Parisienne. It gives you pretty detailed instructions about taking an existing pattern and refitting it for you. You will have to take a lot of measurements and do a lot of math, but it's definitely worth the extra time. I am glad I took the time to use it.

So I pulled out my newsprint pad and pencils and started redrafting my pattern. Once I printed out the free pattern, I started off with this:

Original pattern from online. The back two pieces are taped together at this stage.

I actually taped the two back pieces together, because it looked more HA at the time. Then I started measuring.

I won't go into too much detail about the measuring (read the "Fitting the Pattern" article - link is above), but I end up with a sheet of paper with two sets of measurements, from both my own body and from the existing pattern. If you use this method, tt will probably end up looking similar to this:

The measurements without 'g' are the patterns measurements for bust, waist, side, etc. The measurements below are my own measurements. 'R' is the lacing gap.

Mine is a bit messy, but you get the idea. The measurements indicated with a 'g' at the end (the bottom measurements) are your own measurements, and the ones without the 'g' are the patterns' measurements. Once I had the measurements, I then had to subtract mine from the patterns, to get the inches I had to add/subtract from the Ralph Pink pattern.

I then subtracted the differences between 'OVg' and 'OV', 'OHg' and 'OH', etc. These are the numbers you add/subtract to your original pattern to get the fitted pattern.

Once I had those measurements, I traced the original pattern on my newsprint sheet and then started redrawing. When I finished, I ended up with this:

Half-boned stays pattern.

Close-up on center front panel. Note the gap I left towards the front for the eyelets.

In the image above, you see that the 1 back panel is once again 2 separate pieces. As I redrew and re-sized the pattern, I also was looking at other stays' patterns and sketches, and I decided to take the back piece I had taped together earlier and divide it in two, and the result looks much more HA. I kept the shoulder strap piece on the top of the front panel, still not sure at the time if I wanted to have shoulder straps or not. I also had to drop the bust line of the original pattern, to right around the nipple line.

For the boning channel patterns, I used the blog post by American Duchess about 18th Century boning channel patterns to figure out which pattern I wanted. She has several diagrams from different decades in the 18th century for boning patterns used during those decades. Originally, I used a half-boned pattern from 1776, but after my first mockup, I realized it didn't give me the support I needed. The pattern you see above is actually the second pattern I did, with a boning pattern similar to 1740s-1760s.

The first mockup was with the half-boned stays pattern, seen above. I reviewed the first part of the tutorial by Rococo Atelier, and decided to get started. I bought some 1/4" flat-oval reed boning from CorsetMaking.com, and took some old fabric I had in my stash, and started cutting the pattern. I only cut 2 pieces of fabric for each panel, mostly because I wanted to practice the boning channels and I didn't want to waste fabric. I used contrast thread so I could see the channels when I stitched them, and gave myself 1/2" seam allowance.

Once I cut the fabric, I marked the lines for boning channels. I started from marking the ends of the lines to the edges of the seam allowance, and then I poked holes in the newsprint pattern in the places where the lines for the boning channels don't meet the edges (Rococo Atelier details this in her tutorial post). I unfortunately didn't take many pictures of this process.

Then I started stitching the boning channels...

I used brown thread for contrast so I could see each channel.

...And they started to look like this! (Please excuse the bad lighting)

Just to test it, I cut a small piece of reed boning and put it into one of the boning channels.

It was way too slip-slidy for my tastes (not sure if that's a word...oh well). This might have been due to the fabrics I used, but I decided to try making my channels 5/16" instead (Again, this was my personal preference, so the go-to size for channels for 1/4" boning is still 3/8" wide). So I redrew my boning channels...

They're a little big!

Looks messy, but boning channels are smaller now!

...And ended up with smaller boning channels. I inserted the same reed piece from earlier and I found it to be more snug, so I stuck with 5/16" wide boning channels. I stitched channels in all eight of my stays' panels, but I decided to put boning in only one side of the stays (4 panels) as a tester. I didn't want to waste the reed boning, despite having ~275ft of it, since I didn't know how much I would need for the final piece.

All the reed is inserted in this back panel. It took a lot of diagonal cutting.

Above is one of  panels in which I inserted the reed...

...and it bends. A lot.

The fact that it was so bendy made me nervous. Also - being the larger woman I was at the time - I was even more nervous that the half-boned pattern wouldn't hold as well with my ample figure, and especially my bust. Now, at the time, I had no idea you were supposed to put 2 pieces of reed in each channel (especially if the reed boning is thinner - such as 1/4" wide), but I decided to redraw my boning pattern using the 1740s-1760s pattern (with much grumbling). And I ended up with this instead:

Fully-boned stays pattern. Yay!

In this close-up photo, you can see I marked a 'B' in each channel I planned to put the reed boning.

Close up of center front panel. Compare to half-boned stays pattern above.

I decided to put boning in every 2 channels, and then skip a channel. I did not use this rule for most of the channels closer to the edges and to the eyelets. For this boning pattern, it's more up to your discretion than following a specific rule. I figured this pattern would make the stays less heavy, and still give me some flexibility with movement, while also giving me support. I also added 1/8" seam allowance on the tabs, to stitch down and seal off one side of the channels (I will regret this later). I did not add seam allowance to the pattern, except on the tabs, but I added 1/2" seam allowance when I traced the pattern on my fabric (I will regret this too). I actually did not do a mockup of this one in fabric, because the fit of the original mockup was great - the boning channels just were not right for me.

In the next post, I'll go into starting up the final piece!

Thanks for reading! Comments and constructive critiques are appreciated!