1820's-1830's Corded Stays

October 5, 2009
I have at last decided that I am completely sick of modern clothing. I hate it, it doesn't last
very long nor hold up to washing well. I also hate modern underclothes - they really don't last
and they are just not comfortable! On the other hand, I love corsets. They are comfortable,
fitted to onself and are very supportive - a bra, a back brace and a body shaper all in one!
What can be more perfect? :)
So, deciding the above I have also decided to make a complete 1820's style wardrobe for
myself for this fall/winter. To start with, I need some corded stays. Today I started a mock up
for my first set. Once I make the first set I will see if I like them, if I need to adjust them, and
then make a few more. I think for this set of clothes I will go more for the overall look of the
period instead of sticking to strictly period construction techniques. I think I'll use my
machine for nearly all of the construction. For a perfectly period garment, all seams should be
sewn by hand. But since these will be for everday wear I'm not so concerned about being
100% historically accurate. Sturdiness and relatively fast construction takes precedence!
Pattern:
I have looked at all the extant 1820's-era stays I could find and have found rather diverse
styles! I already have short stays that can work for 1820's style clothing but I find them more
comfortable if I am pregnant and have a baby bump that can support the waistline of the short
stays. Right now the waistline digs into my flesh. Not so comfortable! I am not currently
pregnant and would like the added support of longer stays so I have decided to go with the
longer style.
I really like the look of Past Patterns 1820's-1830's corded stays but do not really want to pay
for a new pattern that I will have to alter to fit me anyway! I thought about sizing up the
corded corset pattern from Katherine's Site but after a miserable failed attempt I pulled out
my Mantua Maker Regency Corset pattern.

This pattern creates a raised bosom, tubular

look so popular in the early 19th century. I first made a mockup of the unaltered regency

pattern but decided the tubular look was not what I wanted. The 1820's were a time of
transition and I wanted some more waist definition and I did not want my bosom right up
under my chin! I am a bit busty, very short waisted and have larger hips. The tube thing just
doesn't do it for me. I'd gladly give up some of my hip girth for a more slender line but after
three babies that is just not going to happen!
So I altered this pattern by marking the point on each pattern piece where my waistline is. I
am very short waisted so this line was pretty much just below the bust gussets and just above
the hip gussets! I had to shorten each pattern piece between 2" and 1 1/2" to get the waistline
to fall in the correct spot. I carved out a little curve at each waistline mark on each pattern
piece, except for the center front. I lengthened the bust gussets to 6" in length so the bosom
will not be pushed up so much. I also realized I need an extra 2" or so around the hips. I could
have added another hip gusset to the seam between the back piece and side piece but instead I
angled those seams out so the gusset will be cut as one with them, for ease of construction.
Anything to get away from gussets! :)
I cut another mock up out from an old denim skirt. I added 1 and 1/2" to each back piece and
sewed up the back seam, added 1/2" to the center front piece and cut two front pieces. When I
tried on the mockup, I simply had to pin the front seam together. The 3" of "gap" (the area
where the final corset will be laced) in the back was filled in by the extra I added to the back
pattern pieces. This is a great way to fit a mock up of a corset and was taken from the fitting
instructions in the Laughing Moon Victorian Corset pattern.

The final mock up fit wonderfully! I traced

each pattern piece off onto fresh paper. Here are my altered pieces:

Next step: Cutting out the

"real" fabric and sewing up the shell and the lining. For that I plan to use gray cotton twill for
the outer layer and a white striped cotton for the lining. Once the corset is corded I may fell in
an additional lining layer but we'll see when the times comes!
Love,
Sarah
October 7, 2009
Yesterday I cut out my twill and cotton layers for my corded stays. After reading more about
construction techniques, I decided I didn't really like the way the Mantua Maker pattern tells
you to put your corset together. Sew all seams right sides together, press seams open, put
lining and outer fabric wrong sides together and "stitch in the ditch" to attach them. I hate
stitching in the ditch for anything, especially corsets. I knew there had to be a better way!
Plus the construction technique sounded horribly modern. A pressed-open seam is not very
strong.
So I went to Katherine's Dress Site again and read more about how she constructed her
1820's-1840's corded stays. The technique was intriguing. The seam allowances are pressed
down, to the wrong side of the fabric, then the pieces are sewn together as close to the edge
of the folded-down allowances as possible. This gives you more layers in the seam, thereby
strengthening it, and forms a slight ridge on the wrong side of the seam. The outer seam looks
like an ordinary one.
So I tried this technique on my twill stays. I loved it. It was quite firm and strong. But alas,
when I went to measure the stays at the waist they came out 2.5" too short! I planned a
finished waist measurement of 25" to allow for 3" of "gap" so I could lace to 28". (very
doable, due to "squishable flesh"). But the measurement of the stays, with the back edges yet
unfinished, measured only 23.5". I need another 1.5" just to bring them up to what I want my
finished measurement to be, then another .5" on each raw back edge to turn under and sew to
the lining before I do the eyelets. Sigh. I was very, very disappointed. I have no idea how this
happened since I carefully measured before making the final pattern pieces but it doesn't
really matter how it happened, just that it did.

So I made a cup of coffee and

browsed some more online images of corsets, especially the ones from the Antique Corset
Gallery. I got some good ideas for cording and decided there are a few things I want to
change on my current pattern before I make the final stays, anyway. So my twill disaster was
just really another great mock up.
I would really like to eliminate the hip gussets if possible. Adding them onto the existing
pattern pieces worked great for the back hip gusset. I could even add the front hip gusset onto
the existing side pattern piece. This would just give me one gusset towards the middle of the
hip. Adding the gusset pieces on like this also gives my pattern pieces a shape similar to the
corded stays on Katherine's Site. I am going to play around with the pattern today to see what
I can do.
I won't be able to get into town to pick up more fabric for new stays until this weekend, so
until then I will be trying to perfect my mock ups and pattern so the finished garment will be
a breeze to put together! (hopefully!) :) I plan to get a few yards of cotton twill and some
cotton sateen for lining. Hopefully that will be sturdy enough to hold up to everyday wear,
yet light enough to be comfortable and easy to work in.
Now I'm pondering what to use for cording. . .
Love,
Sarah
October 14, 2009
Well, it has been about a week since I last updated. I went to Jo Anns over Columbus Day
weekend and got some cotton twill on sale. The bolt I brought to the cutting counter had
nearly 3 yards left on it; I wanted but two yards in two, one-yard pieces and one peice was
almost a yard and the other piece was just a bit less than two. Because of that, the nice
cutting-lady charged me 50% off the sale price - already at $3.99 - and gave me all the
yardage as remnants! How cool is that?!
I cut out my stays from my fresh, altered pattern yesterday. I drafted in the front gusset as part
of the side piece and it worked very well. I used a white striped cotton as the lining and just
one layer of twill as the outer layer. I sewed the pieces together using a different technique
than I did with my gray twill set last week. I first layed out the front lining, wrong side up,

and placed the twill layer, wrong side down, on top of it. I then placed the side piece beneath
the lining/fashion fabric piece (as if I were going to sew it to the front piece, lining to lining,
right sides together) and then layed the twill piece on top of the front twill piece, right sides
together. In the end, four layers (both the lining and fashion fabric front piece, and lining and
fashion fabric side pieces) were sandwiched together. I sewed one seam, and there was the
front and side pieces attached, and all seams nicely enclosed. This gives me a strong, fourlayer seam and encloses all allowances at once. What could be better? This is a technique
described by Carolann, a resident Expert, at the Sewing Academy in the context of mid-19th
century corsets. I don't know if this technique was used on earlier corsets but it works well
and is much quicker to do than other techniques. At the end, 1/4" on each raw edge of the
back pieces was turned to the inside and the edges stitched together very close to the fold.
Today I had to stitch-in-the-ditch to connect the twill gussets with their linings. I hated that; it
took me two hours to do six gussets!
Once that was done it was time to cord the stays. I had previously decided to cord and bone
these stays since I really do need the extra support for a good shape. I made a set of corded
stays pre-baby and even then, at a C cup size, the cords didn't support nearly so well as the
bones in my 1860's corset did. Now, I'm bigger "up there" and want a good, supportive shape
since I'll be wearing these for every day.
A major question for me was - were 1820's-1830's era stays ever boned? I had no idea. ..all
the extant examples I've seen in pictures (maybe a dozen or so) didn't have any apparant
boning. But out of the thousands of women who wore thousands of stays during that time
period, surely someone used boning, right? I looked online and found a blog post someone
wrote about a set of corded stays she made for herself that she ended up having to add boning
to, since she was a curvier lady. Someone mentioned in that post an extant set of stays that
had boning in them! So, 2nd hand documentation, sure, but it does seem to indicate boning
was used!
So then I thought. . .why not just bone the durn things? I like the way cording looks but I
don't have time now to hand sew cording channels and then thread cording through them. I
need these stays soon. I could put in bones now, and if I needed or wanted to later, reinforce
areas that need more support with corded channels.
So that is what I did. It took me about an hour this afternoon to mark and sew bone channels.
Here is a picture of them so far.

The channels are all sewn and

bones are inserted into the (your) left side. . .I held them up to me and I think they will work
very well. With this boning placement, the final stays will have twelve bones, although I may
add an extra bone to each seam between the side/back pieces, giving me a total of fourteen
bones. I did not leave an area for a busk, since I want these to be flexible and I never used a
busk with my last set of corded stays. I do have channels for bone where the wood busk
would have been, if I had chose to use it.
So all I really have left to do on these is finish putting in the boning, binding the top/bottom
edges and working the eyelets. I need to get some laces too, but otherwise I should have these
done by the end of the week!
Love,
Sarah
October 26, 2009
Well, so much for glorious notions of being a consistent keeper of a dress diary. It's been a
while since I've updated!
Since I last posted, I finished the stays. Shortly after my last post I bound all the edges and
made eyelets. I really liked how they looked once this was done. Here are some pictures from
last week showing the front, back and side views of the stays and the shape they give.

Back:

Side: As you can see I used 3 bones down the

center of the stays instead of the more period correct busk pocket and busk. I did this because
I figured I would never use a real busk and that more support there was better.

I started making a dress to be worn over these

stays and soon realized that I would have to make a modification down the center front.
While the bones down the center front gave great tummy support they made an odd little
ridge at the center front bust line. This line would usually be straightened by a straight busk,
but the boning is not that stiff and bends to my form. It "cups" over my bosom and pokes up
above the bust line - not a pretty sight when worn with a fitted dress!
So, I ended up undoing the binding at the center front top and I removed the 3 center bones. I
sewed 3 lines of cotton cording down each side of a 1.25" space that will be my "busk
pocket" (even though I will probably never wear a busk with this!) I used the bone channels
as spaces for the cording, just sewing two lines down the center of each off-center bone. I
then threaded the cords through with a big needle. The center bone channel is still intact but
theoretically I can remove those stitches to leave the 1.25" wide opening for a busk if I decide
someday I need to use one.

This took care of the pokey

ridge problem. The corded center section cups my bosom but it gently curves and conforms
rather that sticking up oddly! Problem solved! Whew! I think these are DONE now! :)

Love,
Sarah