Tan wool Augusta stays

ME: I'm going to just finish binding these stays and then get nice pictures of them before I write my post about them!

ALSO ME: NAPPING IS NICE LOL.

I should know by now that I should just work with what I have NOW and then add more LATER, or it will never HAPPEN at ALL.

So, without further ado, here's a little write-up/review of the Virgil's Fine Goods/ Scroop Augusta stays pattern! 

With apparently no pictures of the back or close-ups, oops. At the very end of our last day in costume at CW. And very silly faces, but alas, that's just my face.

As noted in my previous post, new stays were an absolute necessity for a Colonial Williamsburg trip. I had grand plans to make a more 1760s-focused set of outfits, but when absolutely none of that had materialized by fall, I decided it was a better idea to just make a new, slightly later set of stays that would fit the date of most of my existing 18thc wardrobe and be more likely to fit with the cut of those bodices.

I already had the Augusta stays pattern that I'd cut out and started in a different (ahem) smaller size *mumble* years ago that a quick measurement told me wasn't worth wasting my time on, so I cut a new poster-paper-mockup with a 32-sized center front piece and 34-sized for the other pieces, in the "Straight" version.

Armed (and dangerous) with the pattern directions, my Patterns of Fashion 5 book, and a wealth of amateur knowledge from twenty years in the hobby that I like to ignore when it suits me, I got the stays about 90% finished by the time of our trip. I didn't bind the tabs yet or line the stays, but as they're quite wearable without doing either of those things, that may never happen!

The stays are made from the following:

• Interlining/ strength layers: 2 layers of hemp canvas. From Dharma Trading but they don't sell it any more, alas. 
• Top fashion layer: Tan wool sateen. Source: Ebay. Brown/tan/cream-colored stays out of solid-colored fabrics seem to have been quite popular during this time period, and this wool was one of the appropriately-colored pieces in my stash!
• Boning: Mostly #0 round reed, with 4 reeds to a channel. The 4 bones at the CF and CB, surrounding the eyelets, are plastic cable ties cut to half-width.
• Bellypiece/interfacing: Combination of modern buckram, cotton rag paper, and medium-weight linen.
• Binding and lacing: Cotton twill tape in various widths.

 

Pattern/Fit Notes

I highly recommend the "Augusta" pattern for anybody even slightly interested in historical accuracy and a very thorough set of directions! It has both modern and historical instructions, and it's easy to do a combination of the two if you want to make a pair of stays that look historical but save some time with machine sewing.

My ONLY caveat in terms of fit is less about the pattern itself, and more about the shape of the person being put into it (that's me). I also add that fit issues in stays/ corsets in general can be resolved by making a boned mockup, as is recommended by this pattern. Me, I live by the mantra of "good enough", and always view the first make of a stays or corset pattern as the working mockup. If it fits perfectly, that's amazing; if it needs tweaks, that'll happen on version 2.0...provided version 1.0 is wearable, which it usually is. I'm a good "squint at it and fudge it til it works" sewer and fitter!

Anyway, straight off the given pattern pieces, I will make these observations about fit:

• I find the CF pieces to be a tiny bit too wide and the CB pieces a tiny bit too narrow. I suspect at least 50% of this observation is due to my Modern Slouch, because over the course of the weekend and enforced Very Upright Posture, the stays got a couple of ticks more comfortable in those areas, but the front strap attachment point is still solidly in my armpit. On version 2.0 I'd probably move the front strap attachment point over maybe 0.5", at most.
• With the compression and slight stretch of the stays with wear, I probably could have cut all of the pattern pieces at size 32. They come within a half-inch of lacing completely closed, and while I know that's perfectly accurate I like to have a little bit more of a gap on a new pair of stays because they usually do stretch a bit.
• I find the back pieces to be too long on me. Next time I'll cut the CB points shorter, and adjust the tabs shorter as necessary. At that length, the side-back tabs are kind of pushing down and poking into my back fat and pelvic bones, and I'd actually rather said back/hip fat fly free to act as skirt support! 
  (Yes, that's a weird thing to say. But hip/bum volume is exactly what you want for last-quarter 18thc style, at least before the waistlines travel dramatically upwards at the end of the century!)

 

Construction Notes

As usual, I read the pattern directions and then mostly followed them. Kind of.

Boning channels & thread chicken 

I sewed the boning channels on the machine and then constructed the rest of the stays by hand, including sewing the pieces together by hand. I did slightly adapt the boning layout for my reed boning, because four pieces of the #0 reed fit perfectly into a presser-foot-width channel, and why bother marking boning channels when I could just presser-foot-eyeball things instead?

I stitched the boning channels with Gutermann cotton thread, which ended up being a fun game of color-matching thread chicken: I had 2.5 small spools of the old thread that was produced in Greece, and I didn't realize how significant the color difference was between those older spools and the newer ones from presumably not-Greece (they don't have a country of origin marked, which the internet tells me means it's probably produced in Mexico?). Like, it would be noticeable if I ran out of the old thread and had to sew channels with the new kind of different. So I did the old game of "only use the exact matching thread on the front side and use the new not-quite-matching one on the back."

I did win thread chicken with the boning channels but I lost with the heavy-duty Gutermann I was using to whip the pieces together (same deal with color matching of the old and new thread), but oh well! Can't win 'em all.

"Bellypiece": excuse you? 

The CF/ "bellypiece" interfacing wasn't in the instructions of the stays, but many of the stays patterned in POF5 have such interfacing, so I decided to try it out. It's basically extra interfacing/stiffening over the belly/ center front point of the stays, with some variation of buckram, paper, and/or heavy weight fabric. I used modern heavy buckram and cotton rag paper in mine because I had no desire to make either of the above items from linen, as they likely would have been in period, but wanted to see what the effect of extra stiffening would be. 

Mainly it means I can't lay this pair of stays flat to pack LOL. Had to pack them stuffed full of shifts and petticoats and surrounded by socks! 

Other stuff 

After sewing the boning channels and boning each piece, I whipped over the seam allowances on each individual piece, then whipped the pieces together using strong thread, a leather needle, thimbles, and a lot of breaks from sewing those seams. I could only do about 1-1.5 seams in a sewing session because sewing through that many layers of heavy-duty fabric was pretty hard on the hands and fingers!

Another adaptation from the pattern was to do fewer eyelets for the front lacing. Partly because I was tired of making eyelets, partly because the front lacing is more for bust fit/ adjustment than making it easier to dress, and partly because I made the bellypiece too big to put in all the eyelets as marked. 

I used cotton twill tape for both the lacing and the binding. Cotton is not strictly historically correct for binding stays of this period as far as I can tell, but cotton twill tape is a reasonable modern compromise in terms of functionality and affordability!

Since I didn't take in-progress pictures, anyone needing visuals is highly recommended to visit Katherine's blog post/ tutorial about making 18th century stays. The pattern is different but the process is pretty much the same. 

 

Okay, is that it?

Why yes. Yes it is. I wore these stays for three full days over the course of our Williamsburg trip, and other than the aforementioned fit notes found them pretty comfortable. Would recommend this pattern with no reservations!

I recommend reed as boning material with a few reservations: it's cheap, easy to work with, and comfortable on the positive side, but I would not recommend it if you're very rough on your stays because the reeds WILL break if you bend them enough. I did make it a point to be mindful about (not) bending too much at the waist while wearing these.

Other than that...I promise to update if and when I ever finish binding these stays and/or take more pictures of them! 

That's a GREAT face. Unfortunately it's also a good profile shot so I kept it...

 

All photos courtesy of my bestie Robin, aka SewLoud.