1795-1805 Short Stays


Background research here, dress diaries here, here, here, here, here.


Mockup to test methods of inserting cup and length of strap on the left, actual version with thread-tracing on the right



The stays were a good experiment and I don't think they were a failure, but I'm not sure I'd make them the same way again.  The cups are marquise/football-shaped pieces of a linen/cotton blend, hemmed all the way around, and whip-stitched into the stays.  There are two rows of gathering stitches across them, as you can see.  I used a bra to figure out the location and shape of the cup cut-outs, but (as you can also see) they didn't entirely work.  I think it's because there's no underwire - the front of the corset should really be more heavily boned to hold the shape.  Rather than getting a completely defined silhouette, I get a kind of soft rounding, which is also period.


The stays should be smaller - I didn't think to take a gap into account when I was scaling the pattern up.  It's not a big problem here, because there's no reduction, but you just get a better fit with one.  I could also have put in more tabs; drawn on the pattern, they looked larger.  At some point, I will go back in and quilt all of the empty space.

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