18th century stays draft 3

Okay, so the due-date for the halloween dress is almost upon me, and I should try to finish the wings. The logical thing to do? Make a new pair of 18th century stays, of course.

I started with the mock-up, naturally. If you recall, my last pair of stays had several problems: most importantly, they were too short-waisted, also the straps were REALLY thick, and I had to adjust my robe a la francaise to hide them and the back, which was much much too high. All these problems occured because I was much too small for my pattern. (I believe I took like an entire piece off, and shrunk several of the other pattern pieces...) Anyway, I've made my own pattern, which hopefully should fit... Here's the first mock-up, below. It was a bit large, and the back pannels weren't long enough. I've fixed it since, (but haven't taken any pics, bad me.) and I'm almost ready to start cutting the real pieces. I'll be using a large-floral ( ! ) interlining, which I've used on one pair of stays before and is quite nice, and the very usual cable ties as boning. Probably the thick ones, because although other costumes gave glowing reports of the thin ones, I'm not quite sure if I entirely believe they'll do their job well enough. I'll just stay safe, thanks. Even though those are a more authentic size, I'm going to machine all un-seen seams, so it's not like it will be PERFECTLY authentic anyway. (I'm doing non-vivible boning channels, btw, I don't want machine-sewn visibles. I don't think. I'm pretty sure not all stays had visible boning channels....)

Here's the embroidered silk from my stash I was thinking about using... but it Isn't Period. Besides, I'm thinking about doing one of those nifty pairs of stays with the embroidered front and plain-silk sides.... y'know? So pretty! But I've never done them like that before! But COULD I DO IT? And did those ever have straps? (I want straps on my stays---fitting is SO much easier that way. Or at least I think so.)

Yay fabric on top of my old stays! Hehe! I still don't know about the fabric... so pretty but so unauthentic! Of course, I'll be using polyester blend thread, so that's another reason that my project is unauthentic... but fabric is so glaringly obvious! And thread isn't!