Update on c.1780 Stays

 After cutting them out last year, I put the pieces for my late 18th century stays in a safe place. I finally found them again in late February, and have finished no other projects since then.

Fully boned, eyelets bound, and attaching the binding.

The stays are made of a double layer of linen canvas, stiffened with artificial whalebone. Chamois leather guards the underarms and will be used to bind the raw edges. I started out lightly boning the stays, just along the seams and openings, but decided on the first fitting to fully bone the garment instead. The boning channels are machine sewn with cotton thread; the eyelets and leather are hand-sewn with waxed linen.

  

So many eyelets.

I had also originally intended these stays to lace only down the back. Reflecting on my 1820s long stays, and what a pain they are to lace, I decided to switch to a front-and-back lacing style. I hadn't accounted for the relative ease of spiral lacing versus cross-lacing behind one's back, and after going to all that trouble, I'm not sure it was worth it. 

And the three eyelets that I had to remove.

After some slight miscalculations, I ended up with 13 eyelets down the each side of the back, 14 on the front, and four at each shoulder strap, for a total of 62 hand-bound eyelets. I actually ended up sewing 65, as I was four eyelets into the second front piece before remembering that these stays were going to be spiral-laced, and thus the eyelets needed to be staggered. As I had done already done on the back panels.

Fortunately, I'd managed to open the eyelets with very little thread breakage, and managed to cut off the stitches on the three extraneous eyelets, then carefully darn over the broken threads. After the first, I found that darning from the inside made a neater and less visible mend. The structural integrity of the stays does not appear to have been compromised, though it is frustrating to have this error in the most prominent place on the garment.

With the chamois leather underarm protectors appliqued into place, all that remains is to attach the leather binding on the upper and lower edges of the stays, then cut and attach a lining made of lighter-weight linen. Even with my best sharp needles, and a very thin, supple leather, the stitching is noticeably slower and harder on my hands than a moderate-to-fine linen or cotton.