I took a deep breath and dived down once again

Into the 18th century!

So I have been quiet for some time, school starting again and a new year to, this new years resolution, sew and wear more dresses the same as last years.

So what is all this about 18th century, well but yes, I had that grand plan about the green Madame Pompadour dress last winter, but it was to much money for the silk, not the right colour was anywhere to be found and it all ran out in the sand.
But an internet friend showed of her new pink robe a la francaise and I totally fell down into the deep sea of 18th century clothing. Last plan was a robe a la francaise, this time I’m going with a robe à l’anglaise with zone front and different coloured skirt (and zone front to) this way I don’t need to buy all the silk at the same time, smart thing right :P

So first I needed to finish my pair of stays I started February last year but never finished. The only thing left was to deal with the shoulder straps and bind the top. The shoulder straps did not work with my body and the issue seemed hard to deal with at that time, I was just to lazy. So yesterday I researched the internet for a while looking for sources for pair of stays without the straps, since I have seen people do them before so I hoped that there were some historical sources to support that. I found a bunch of drawings and over at http://www.laracorsets.com I found that her two oldest corsets both had no straps.

So I just chopped my of to! It took about 1 hour to take out the steel boning and trim them to new lengths, cut of the straps and some of the back and then bind it.

And then I needed a pattern for the dress.
I had gotten a new book this Christmas it was “A History of Costume” by Carl Köhler and it actually had a diagram over exactly what I needed, the diagram was easy to follow and it was easy to draw a pattern from, I just needed to fix it to my size but that was easy to. After one mock up I had a nice bodice to work from.

Then I made a makeshift bum roll out of scrap fabric and pleated some fabric to see how much I might need for the “over dress” part.

I am making the dress “en fourreau” so ignore the incorrect shape of the “tail”, It will also have more seams in the back but since they are not shaping anything I ignored them in the mock up.

 

almost finished

the 18th century pair of stays are almost done now! The upper edge needs binding and there are a few small things left to be done, but I can see the light in the tunnel now ;)

 

pair of stays – binding

I am binding the lower edge of my pair of stays, it is a real pain but I am doing it by hand, it seems to be the only way of doing it. I realize why a lot of people make the pair of stays with the big tabs, I have small and MANNY tabs, why did I do this? Oh well, no pain no gain.

 

18th century pair of stays

To my Robe a la Francaise I need a pair of stays, I found the pattern in “Corsets and crinolines” by Norah Waugh and used the same technique as I did with my pocket hoops I scaled the pattern using a overhead projector on the wall and then putting up some paper and draw the pattern on it, to make it fit my measurements I just moved the over head projector further back or nearer the paper to make the pattern on the wall bigger or smaller, and then I measured the bust measurement on the pattern on the wall and made sure that it was the same as mine – 10cm (approximately – 4 inches)

the top boning channel is kind of messed up, without thinking I sewed the other channels shut, when I should have done as I did with the channel under it, I have fixed that now.

So now I am making a mock up corset, to make sure that it actually fit me before I cut into the coutil and silk. But I am sewing it as a real corset, with boning, strength fabric (non stretchy twill) and nice binding. If it fit me I have a functional pair of stays that perhaps is not as strong as my silk one will be, but that works. If it is to big or to small, I can sell it without feeling bad about it.