Stays Question

What do you all think about horizontal boning at the bust of 18th century stays? My 1790 stays are pretty much done now, but I have yet to put in any horizontal boning. I know that some stays have it and some don't. Does it really make that much of a difference in terms of shape? I'd love to hear your wisdom.

For reference, I'm using the brown jean corset pattern from Jill Salen's corset book. The boning pattern is my own design based on multiple period examples. And my stays are half-boned.

1908 Corset

jenthompson's talk of 1908 corsets reminds me that I never posted pictures of my own 1908 corset that I made. It was for an article for Foundations Revealed back in August 2012. It's this corset and the original pattern can be found on La Couture Parisienne and an incomplete version of the pattern is on Wikimedia Commons.


I made it from a single layer of plain-weave cotton that I dyed using onion peels, curry powder, and tea bags (just as an experiment). It has a waist stay of twill tape and is also bound with twill tape. The boning is skinny cable ties in channels applied on the inside. Let me know if you want a scaled version of the pattern on graph paper and I can email it to you. I'm all technology inept and don't know how to put the pattern pdf in this post. The measurements of the original are approximately: Bust = 36", Waist = 26", Hips = 44"