The stays are done! THE STAYS ARE DONE!!!

Did I mention the stays are done?  Because they are.  62 eyelets sewn by hand.  ALL DONE!

I mean, sure, I did all of the other stitching by machine, but these eyelets turned out really nice and I'm really happy with the overall effect.  Also, the stays fit perfectly!  Wahoo!

Without further ado, pictures!

Center front eyelets.  Note how they are offset by one inch except for the two at the very top and very bottom.  These are laced the same way in front and back.  One ribbon starts at the bottom and travels up in a spiral, rather than starting with the middle of the lace at the bottom and crossing the two over each other like a shoelace.

Back eyelets, same spiral layout.  Go ahead, click on the pictures and look at them really close up.  I'm damn proud of these eyelets.  

Note that when these are laced up, the edges won't actually be right up against each other like this.  There will be a gap of maybe 1-2" in the back.  The front will wind up more pointed, with the edges forming a "v" rather than lining up to each other.  Once I get the lacing in the back so that it's comfortable, I'll just tie it in place and leave it in, and get the stays on by doing up the front lace myself.  

Here are the shoulder strap and bust peak eyelets.  A shorter ribbon connects these two.

Now I have a question to pose to my esteemed readers.  The question is regarding what color the lacing ribbon should be.  I have seen period and reproduction examples of contrasting ribbons in quite bright colors, as well as plain white or off-white tapes or ribbons.  The reason I am asking is that it is likely that the stays will be seen, if we do in fact go ahead with a "Dressing Abigail Adams" presentation.  There is the argument to be made that sometimes what is most authentic does not actually register as such to the modern eye, so my ideal would be     

I have a grosgrain ribbon in a perfect matching green, but currently not enough of it to lace the whole thing (and my local JoAnn doesn't seem to carry this particular ribbon in this shade).  Here are a few rows of lacing with the green:

I quite like this, although I do think something with more contrast would help visually distinguish it from the stays, and make it easier for people to see the spiral lacing  But it's moot because I don't have enough of it :-(

This is what I'm calling the "homespun" ribbon that I was so excited about, with the little green accents, but...meh, it just doesn't have the same impact I thought it would have.    

 Like, right up close you can see that it has some texture and the little green ribbon accents, but from far away...all I see is shoelaces!!  I'm really disappointed.  Guys, am I wrong???

Here's what I mean about contrast.  The ribbon is distinct from the stays and you can really clearly see how spiral lacing is different from cross lacing.  Eamon says this is the wrong shade of purple (it's a bit darker and more vivid than how it looks in the picture).  He says it takes it into "Renaissance faire" territory.  I get what he's saying.  There are period examples with color combinations like this!  But okay, yeah, maybe Abigail wouldn't be quite so flashy.  Ideally, I'd like to find something complementary but not in-your-face.  Something more muted, but still elegant, like a lighter purple, or kind of a stone blue??  JoAnn's selection is just really not that great.

Side note: that long metal thing is a great little tool called a "bodkin."  It's kind of like an oversized needle - it has an "eye" that you can thread with the ribbon, and the end is just a little ball that pokes through the eyelets.  These eyelets turned out a tad smaller than intended, and this little tool gets through them just fine.

And then there's this.  Plain off-white cord.  I would need to figure out some way to keep the ends from fraying, but it's certainly a period-appropriate choice.  It just...it lacks oomph.  The stays are such a nice brocade I want to do something that has a little pizzazz. 

Anyway, here's a little Eyelet 101.  There's a tool that inserts grommets with what is essentially a hole-puncher for fabric, but that tears the fibers and creates a weak point in the weave.  Instead, you use an awl to gently open a hole between the fibers, stretching them apart.  This maintains the integrity of the fabric, keeping it stronger.  Then you do a first pass of regular stitches with a needle and embroidery thread to start opening up the hole.

I highly doubt that I'm the first to discover this, but I figured out a neat trick that kind of reinforces the edge of the hole while doing the first pass of stitches.  If you keep the "tail" of the embroidery thread an inch or two long, you can hold it off to the left and catch it in the stitches as you go.     

This is the first pass completed, and you can see how I've gone all the way around the hole enclosing the "tail" in each stitch.  After this, you poke through the hole again with the awl to stretch it out and set the stitches.  Then you do a buttonhole stitch all the way around by wrapping the needle with the long thread before pulling it taut.  

I did make a few other accessories today, so that's some more to-dos off the list.  These are structural as well as practical, and I needed them to be done before I could really dive in to making the dress.

This is a hip pad, which is a pretty self-explanatory name.  It looks just a throw pillow for your bum that helps flare out the skirt and give it shape (it creates a less exaggerated silhouette than hoops and paniers).  Sometimes it would be just sort of a crescent shape, but I actually like that this one has sections so that the padding doesn't shift around too much.  The pattern (which came as part of the dress pattern) didn't call for any embellishment, but I was pretty sure I remembered having this length of narrow lace in my stash, and it turned out to be exactly the right amount.  To within eighths of an inch!  I had to pin it several times to get it matched up just so.  It adds a lot, I think.  

Big honkin' pocket, right??  It wasn't until last century that pockets became incorporated into pants and dresses and skirts for women.  It used to be a separate piece that tied around the waist, and was accessed through pocket slits in the petticoat(s) and skirt of the dress.  For modern day re-enactors, it's a great place to stash anachronistic items like cell phones and keys!

It is truly taking a village to get this ensemble together.  Next post will be all of the wonderful things that folks have made, loaned, or given to me to help me save the time!

Stays are coming along

Wow, it's been almost two weeks since I posted.  But never fear, I have been steadily working on these stays and the finish line is in sight.  I had really hoped to get started on the eyelets by now, but at least I've moved on to binding!

In case anyone reading this blog doesn't know, at the end of February, I started working at a certain well-known community organization and workout facility (you might know its name best as the Village People song that is overplayed at weddings - if this seems like I'm being coy, it's because I think it's best to keep work and social media separate).  I work in the Child Watch area, where members can drop off their kids for a couple of hours while they use the facility).  Ziva comes with me to almost all of my shifts, and she can just play and hang out with the other kids while I'm working, which is great for both of us.  It's not a huge space, so she's happy that I'm nearby, and she'll occasionally check in, but she's usually keen to do her own thing.  That's really the best benefit of working there.  See, employees who work in other areas get 10 hours of Child Watch during their work shifts (whereas I get to have Ziva with me for all 25 hours if I want to), and then all of us get a discount on the daily or monthly rates to have their kids in Child Watch beyond those hours.  Also, employees get a free membership.  And with that membership comes things like swim classes, so I do a parent+child class with Ziva twice a week.  The kicker is, it's 2.5 hours after my shift ends, so I've just been paying for the day rate so she can keep playing and I get some uninterrupted sewing time.  Most of the other staff use their Child Watch hours for exercising - but you know, I'm just that special that I use it for handsewing 18th century stays. I wish I'd started using that time between work and swimming for sewing when I first began this project, because it's super cheap and an excellent use of time!  Ah well.

When I last blogged, I had just finished tracing down the boning channels.  Since then I have:

1) cut and rounded off my cable ties into 28 individual "bones" (all in different lengths, of course - it would have been far too easy if they were all uniform, right??)
2) inserted all of the bones
3) stitched binding by hand down to the top openings of both halves of the stays, and
4) trimmed the tabs at the bottom of the stays so they are rounded instead of squared.

I was going back and forth about that last one, because there are period examples with square and rounded tabs, but to me, rounded is a bit more aesthetically pleasing.  I was terrified to cut them because I'd already put so much work into these stays, but I lined up the two halves and pinned them together so even if I made little mistakes here and there, they'd at least be identical little mistakes!  I just have to keep reminding myself that binding hides a world of sins.

Now I just need to get the binding sewn down around all of those tabs, which will involve lots of futzing and squiggling around corners, but I think I can manage it.  Oh, and speaking of the binding, I was originally thinking of using binding and lacing ribbon in a coordinating but contrasting color like purple, but I couldn't find both binding and ribbon in the same matching shade (why don't these companies use the same dye lots???), so I ended up going with a perfectly matched green for the binding, and then I found this sweet sort of homespun ribbon in a kind of light linen color with - would you believe it - tiny little green accent stitches running down each side!  I couldn't resist.  I actually like that the binding is such a good match, because it's just one nice uniform background color, so I could switch out the lacing ribbon for something a little more flashy if I want to.

After the binding is complete, there will still be eyelets to sew by hand.  Probably about 60 of them.  Yeah, I bit off a lot with this whole project.  I'm going to be borrowing a lot of underpinnings and accessories, and I've hired someone to make a dress for Ziva as "Nabby."  The fabric for my gown hasn't arrived from India yet!  I just got word that it made it to New York, though, so it's at least in the country!

But now let's focus on the good stuff...pictures of my progress!!

Here's the package of cable ties - they're 36" long and 1/4" wide.  They were a little wider than I had expected, so I stitched the boning channels just a tad outside the edge of the lines I had traced.

Here's a cable tie cut down to the right length, and the top sort of shaved down and rounded off (I scraped it against very rough sandpaper, which you can see in the picture above) so it doesn't poke through the fabric.  I cut them with tinsnips, which made the job much easier!

BONED!  In the best possible sense, of course.  Eamon has been saying all along that it's no fun because the jokes are too easy to make.

Here's the boning shown from the coutil side.  You can see that it really gives the stays their structure.

And here's a closeup on the brocade side.  The channels are slightly raised.  

This is after stitching the binding down on the brocade side.  You can see how nicely the binding (which is cut on the bias, or the diagonal of fabric) curves around the shape of the top of the stays.  If it was cut on the straight grain it wouldn't stretch and be this flexible.

Here's the same thing from the coutil side, before folding the binding over and stitching it down.  This is all done by hand because it's too fiddly for the machine.  Not all of the stitches came all the way through, which is fine, it's all hidden anyway once the binding is folded down.  The bias is pre-folded and basically comes down right where it's supposed to on this side, so it's not like you need the hand stitches as a guide.  But dang it, I sewed by hand and I almost never do that, so please admire my hand stitching!!

The bias stitched down, shown from the brocade side.

And here's how it looks all stitched down from the coutil side.  It's a little wrinkly but pressing it should help.

This is a really minor detail, but if you look carefully at the bottom of the stays, this is after I rounded off the tabs rather than leaving them squared at the bottom.

Isn't this terrific for the lacing ribbon?? I just love that little hint of green. I'm sure it won't show (anyone who gets close enough to see it had better know me REALLY well), but I'll know it's there!

A tiny bit of progress on the stays

Eamon and Ziva and I went over to Seattle for the day to run a bunch of errands around SoDo - I needed to go to a pottery supply store, plus we stopped in at the Tango Zulu in Pioneer Square (that's the store I used to work at in Port Gamble) and we've both been wanting to go to Uwajimaya for a really long time.  It was a successful trip on all counts - Uwajimaya even had calamansi juice, this Filipino citrus drink that we stumbled upon last fall in an Asian market near our apartment in Groton, CT.  We became addicted to the stuff and were really excited to find it.  Yay!!

The only downside was that we didn't get home until almost 8:30, so I didn't get much time to sew.  My trick of putting the heavy books on the stays mockup actually worked, so they were finally mostly flat and I was able to hold up the boned half to myself and get a sense for how well they will fit, and it looked just right.  Because I don't have a lot of time for this project, I decided not to bone the other half and just run with it since the measurements match mine, and instead of just having lacing in the back, I'm altering it slightly to lace in front too, which is very forgiving.  So, tonight I cut out all of the pieces in coutil, and I'm hoping that tomorrow night I will be able to cut out the brocade and start stitching the boning channels.  Ideally, I'd love to have all of that done by Tuesday so that when the cable ties arrive all I have to do is trim them and insert them.  I do need to get a bunch of matching thread and something to use for binding*.  In the period, it looks like the most common material for binding was actually a long thin strip of leather or suede.  I might have to go with regular binding tape just because it will be easiest to find.  I will also need ribbon or cord for tying down the straps and lacing the corset.  The straps are stitched to the back of the stays and come up and over, and there is an eyelet** at the end of the strap and at the top point of the front of the stays where you attach the strap with a ribbon or cord.

Definitions
* Binding - bias-cut fabric, sometimes folded or double-folded, used to cover raw cut edges of fabric.  Sometimes raw edges are hidden by placing the fabric right sides together, stitching almost all the way around, turning and then closing the opening by hand (this is called "bagging").  But for these stays, I'll just be stitching the two fabrics together only at the center back and center front and then adding binding around the entire top raw edge and bottom raw edge.

** Eyelets - nowadays they are usually made with metal grommets that get stamped into the fabric.  But in the period, they were worked by hand.  You punch a hole in the fabric with an awl, which just kind of moves the fibers aside rather than tearing them, and then stitch around the hole to ensure that it doesn't fray.  Stays were not laced extremely tightly in this period - that didn't come until the Victorian era - but eyelets still need to be strong enough so that the stays can form the desired shape.  I do hope to make my eyelets by hand for these stays, but that's a lot of time I'm not sure I have!  Maybe that will be the sort of thing I'll do in between work and Ziva's swim classes, when I'm just sitting in the car with her while she naps :-/