Half-boned Stays:

Necessity is the mother of invention. Or in this case, the mother of costuming. I have been wanting to do a show piece effigy for a while now, plus I've been needing a new effigy corset period, so when I got back from London I figured a good way to help me transition from GMT to PST and keep 1me out of trouble (ie. driving my car too much while suffering from jet lag) would be to make myself a new set of stays.

 

A while back, before embarking on my 10 week long adventure in England, I had already started on a pair of half-boned stays in the effigy style, out of some natural colored linen/silk that I acquired from Denver Fabrics. I had drafted the pattern up from the diagram in Corsets & Crinolines by Nora Waugh and then did the standard modifications I've always done with this corset to make it fit me.

I dug the mostly completed corset out of the trunk of my car (where I keep a complex system of filing for school and costuming projects) and assessed the situation. The bulk of the sewing had been done and all that was needed was to add the boning, put in eyelets, and bind the edges.

Eyelets:

I decided to hand bind my own eyelets with this corset, basing them on the eyelets on the Munich bodys (formerly known as the Pfaltzgrafin Dorothea Sabine von Neuberg corset). These eyelets were reinforced with a metal ring.

Good instructions on making beautiful bound eyelets by Marion McNealy. I based these eyelets on the same technique, but I decided to reinforce them with a soldered jump ring per each eyelet. I had to special order my jump rings from Fire Mountain Gems, as no local supplier sold them in packs (they're sterling silver, too. You could imagine the cost per ring). You could use unsoldered (split) jump rings, but the fact that they have an opening means that the jump ring can either slice through your stitching or it will eventually work itself out of the stitching.

Using the awl to make the hole. Casting over the soldered jump ring to secure it. Button-hole stitch over the jump ring. Finishing off the button-hole stitch. Back-stitch on the underside to secure the thread.

 

Boning Channels:

After inserting the boning, I noticed that the tension at the waist was causing the fabric to warp, so I decided to reinforce the boning with flossing. This is not a period technique for this era, so far as I know, but it was used extensively to strengthen the integrity of later corsets from the 18th century onwards. Plus it also helps to prevent the boning from shifting around in the channel (and in some cases, flipping).

I went with a very basic flossing design and initially started out with the intention to just floss the areas that were prone to the most stress (waist/hip, center front, etc). That quickly turned into "lookit how cool it looks! Let's do every channel!" Using cream colored DMC perl cotton thread, I flossed every single boning channel on the front two pieces before getting sick of it.

The corset with about 1/4 of the flossing finished.

Finishing up:

At this point it was a good idea to try it on to make extra sure that it fit me, especially after doing all that work on the flossing. To make a long story short, it did fit. So, I went ahead and added the binding to the edges, entirely by hand (I was still jet lagged and my sewing machine lives at my mom's house, a good 20 miles from my apartment). Instead of making my own bias tape, I just went and used the bog standard packaged stuff. Yeah, its poly-cotton, but at a certain point, rationale has to kick in... Especially after doing all those blasted boning channels!
The obligatory "bathroom mirror shot". P.S. My shift is on backwards. D'oh!

It fit me snugly, which is what a corset should fit like. But it is perhaps just a tad too "snug" even so. I took my waist measurement and discovered that it gives me the exact amount of reduction as my Victorian corset (24.5" is my standard Vic. waist measurement). Wow. In the past, I've had issues with the shoulder straps on effigy corsets and have either folded them inside the corset or left them off the pattern completely. This time around, I'm actually pretty happy with them. They sit where they should, they don't fall off my shoulders and they're not bulky.

 

The next bit will be to make a matching petticoat from natural colored linen. It will be pointed (ie. laced) to the corset, which means more eyelets now that I think of it. Also, the rest of the corset will be flossed at some point. And I really should buy a better lacing cord one of these days... Sigh.