mala_14 | Stays progress pictures

I forgot that I had taken some progress pictures in January as well. Here are the stays and the boning pattern after I'd drawn it all out.

A better shot of the boning pattern:

Trying out how I wanted to use the reed. I thought I was going to go with two reeds in each channel, but I ended up just using one. When I tried to put in two reeds, it was just too crowded for the channels and difficult to do. However, now that I'm only using one, I could probably have made the channels more narrow. Oh well.

A picture of the reed. It's 1/4" flat reed, but I split it lengthwise when I'm using it. I thought I'd take a picture of it because it's hard to find good pictures of what reed people are using.

The right and wrong sides of the pieces. The two front pieces are both boned with the seam allowances whipped down. You can even see where I've started to sew one front to its side front. The back pieces just have the channels sewn (by machine). I didn't whip down the tab seam allowances though, because I want to try them on first and see how deeply the tabs need to be cut.

Close-up of the whipstitched seam, with right sides together.

Close up of the seam from the right side with it opened out flat. (Just had a moment where I accidentally backspaced and made the page go back. AH!!! Short freak out before going back to post. Luckily the whole post was saved and I could just pick back up where I left off. Whew! That was close.) This seam will have some sort of seam tape over it. I have some 1/4" cotton tape that I think I will use. I'm hoping it's narrow enough. Anyone have any opinions?

And lastly, both fronts sewn to their side fronts!

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elizabeth_mn

Wow! Those look amazing!

mala_14

Thanks! I'm enjoying the pink. :)

m_of_disguise

Ooo, those look fantastic! So dramatic with the swoopy seam.

Thank you! Those 1780s corsets have such great seamlines. I really wanted to copy that.

koshka_the_cat

These are looking fabulous!

I'm using 1/8 inch tape on my seams. I'd just lay the 1/4 inch out to see how it looks.

Thanks Katherine!

Good to know! And that's really good advice. I'll check it out.

howlgirl

What a fantastic shape!

Thank you!

lovetriangle

Those look great! Narrow real grosgrain would work great on those seams. Milliner's grosgrain, not the stuff with the sharp edge you get at Joann's.

Thanks! I don't know if I'd be able to get grosgrain around here, but that would look really nice.

atherleisure

Those are looking great. I used 3/8" ribbon folded in half for my recent stays, but I did a pair with 1/4" tape that I think look pretty good. https://www.flickr.com/photos/23597713@N05/12009946485/in/album-72157638319846953/

Thank you! After trying out my 1/4" tape and comparing with some 1/8" poly ribbon I had around, I was actually thinking at 3/16" would be the perfect width. I think I'll go with the 1/4" though. Yours looks nice; it highlights the seamlines really well. Looking at extant stays, they seem to have tape that is about the same width as the boning channels, so 1/4" would be right for mine.

That's a really good point. For what it's worth, my new stays have channels that are about 3/16" so I'm following that rule of thumb without even having realized it. I'm looking forward to seeing yours with the tape.