More Stays!!!

I still can't quite believe that I finished my first pair of stays this week and everytime I see them a big smile is appearing on my face:-)

After admiring them nonstop for about 1,5 days I decided I needed a new sewing project involving my sewing machine!
What to do? I have another (the last) week at home ahead so there is plenty of time for something awesome to make! So I had a browse in my stash and reviewed my UFOs and mock-up's with the following result:

Let's make some Stays!!!

Ah, I know I said I wanted some rest for my fingers, but then I found this lovely fabric and my mock-up of a pair of stays I started some 6 month ago and I have all that time, so why not? Tab-binding does not scare me anymore!!! 

ugly stay mock-up

 You think I'm crazy, don't you???

To the right you can see the old mock-up of the stays I planned to make for my first 18th century dress, which now unfortunately is postponed to most likely next year. The dress will be based on a painting from 1776 and so it seemed the right thing to do to try the 1776 Stays from "Corsets and Crinolines".

Lucky me! I can even use this as a HSF challenge! #16 Terminology gives so many options that I can sew my stays and participate.

The fabric for this project will be an upholstery cotton canvas I bought to cover my chairs (which I did) and then had a huge leftover...
Reason: the minimal purchase was one metre and since my chairs are not exactly big and the fabric has a width of 2,8m I have a reasonable amount to make some stays!

 

I started on thursday afternoon to adjust the used pattern to fit me and then cutting my fabric. The interlining and lining will be the same as for the other stays, but the boning will be a mixture of german fishbone, spiral steel and flat steel. My intention here is simple: the mock-up was made using plastic boning and I didn't like how it bend in some boning channels... The steel will be used at the centre front, centre back and side seams.

 The design of the fabric is showing a girl feeding chickens, surrounded by flowers, garlands and other pretty things. The oval is the eye-catcher and therefore should be placed somewhere central. Unfortunetely the centre front seam is not a straight one, but I tried my very best to match the image as good as possible.

Find the pattern pieces!!!!

The stays are not fully boned, but I added some more boning channels than indicated in the pattern.
All sewing exept for the eyelets and the binding is done by machine!

I kind of managed to match the design until underneath the oval frame. But since my focus is on the chicken-feeding scenery I am good with that...

Boning supplies

They start to look a little like stays...

 After the boning was insereted (earlier today) it was finally time to think about the binding. I originally planned on using a white satin ribbon for the binding, but it didn't work out...

Not a difficult decision...

 ....on my test piece. Since I really wanted a white binding I didn't care to think about an alternative for a second.
Until I made my test binding. The satin looked horrible! And by the way, fabric binding is a lot more difficult than leather binding!
So I went back to my stash and pulled out the fabric for the dress I planned and decided to make my own bias strips from pink silk. The colour goes nicely with the green of the cotton and since I will wear these stays with the dress from the same fabric it is ok.
I am confident that there will be enough to make my dress and the bias binding for the stays.
I bought the fabric at the sale of our local opera house. They only do it once in 2-3 years and I was very happy that a friend pointed out to me that there would be a sale this year. I have been there once before with my mum many years ago and remembered rows and rows of costumes, hats, shoes and more.
But I didn't go for the costumes this time.
They also had a fabric sale for totally crazy prizes! I found the perfect fabric for my dress. Pure silk for 3€ per metre!!!! Can you believe it? I bought everything they had left and that was a good amount of 11 metres!
 

 So now, not even a week after finishing the leather binding of my 1740-1760 Stays it is Binding-Time again!