Construction of the Stays ~ part 1

Hey guys, welcome back to Enchantrose Costumes. I am sorry about the delay on the stays video. As I mentioned in my last video, I was moving and after moving I had to do a couple renovations before officially moving into the space. And then after that was pretty much finished, I ended up getting sick. So, yeah, things just got pushed along and finally I'm starting to feel better, so I've decided to try and start up the video series again. I hope you guys enjoy the construction of the stays, part one. So this is my pattern that I've enlarged from the corset and crinoline book. I had to make slight alterations to the pattern to fit more to my body type. So you can see here I've added some more room to the sides of the pattern pieces and created new patterns. I also checked that the new pattern pieces lined up with the original ones. After I corrected any imperfections in the pattern, I went ahead and started laying out the pieces on a single layer of coutil. I then traced around the pattern with a heat-sensitive pen and added a half-inch seam allowance to the piece, as the patterns do not come with a seam allowance. And this is all but two of the pieces traced out. Okay, something I should have checked before I cut is grainline. I made a rather stupid mistake. I was using this as my grainline, but what I forgot to check was the way it would be on the body. So, I have the grainline running like this, but the corset is going to be like this on the body. So when you stretch it, you'll see it'll pull ripples into the fabric. Now if the grainline was running the correct way, which would be this way, you wouldn't get those ripples when you pull on the fabric. So I luckily only have to cut, re-cut the side front piece. So just two of those guys, and this I can just recycle for something else in the future. As you can see here, I have three of the four layers for my stays. The outer layer is the blue, the second layer is the coutil, and the third layer is the linen. After laying all three layers together, I'm just going to go along and pin along the edges, and after that, I will baste along the edges, and so it'll keep all three layers securely together. I'm just doing a very quick running stitch along the seam allowance, making sure it is lining up on both sides. This is also known as flat lining. You can do it with a machine, but I find I get a better result when doing it by hand. The next step is to draw the boning channels onto the piece. Now my bones are quarter-inch flat oval reeds and are slightly larger than what the pattern calls for. I did use the pattern as a general placement so I could get an idea of where the boning channels would go. Another thing I had to keep in mind is that I did not want to draw exactly a quarter inch away from the last line because I needed a little wiggle room for the bones. Otherwise, I would have a difficult time sliding them into the channels. With the first center front panel complete, I then turned over the seam allowance on the second one and lined it up so I could make sure the points met up perfectly in the front. After marking the boning channels on all the panels, I then moved over to the sewing machine and sewed along the lines I had just created. The boning of the stays was the most challenging for me so far. I had not used reed before to bone a stays or corset, so this was a first for me. The first thing I did was, of course, measure out the boning as I went along and I cut it on the larger side so I could sand it down to make rounded edges so it wouldn't poke through the fabric once the bones were inside. I discovered later on it was much easier to get a nice round edge if I left the sandpaper on the table. Now there were times when bones did break and I discovered afterwards because I didn't soak them or treat them before working with them, but when that did happen, I just simply cut the piece smaller and used it in a smaller area. And this is just showing the difference between bones that have been ironed versus bones that have not been ironed. The next step is stitching down the seam allowances. On four of the pieces, I added facings and the reason for this is so I can get a clean finish and it makes it easier to attach the lining and so it is not seen from the outside. These are also where I will be putting in the hand bound eyelets. I went around the pieces of the stays that are not being attached together with a whip stitch to secure the bones in place. These places are the tops and bottoms of the stays around the tabs and on the straps. You can see in this example, the bottom edge has been whip stitched together and the seam allowances have been whip stitched down and I'm just continuing with the facing here. I'm sewing the seam together with a very small whip stitch, and I'm using four threads for added strength. I'm also back stitching every couple inches just as a precaution. Before I attach the strap to the stays, I'm first going to attach the trim over the seam in the back. This way I can get a nice clean finish on the top edge of the trim. After securing the trim, I attached the strap using the same method as before.