18th Century Stays: Boning, Eyelets, and Binding

NOW that I have figured out my  layer problem and got all the boning channels sewn. I have already sewn the third inside layer together and set it aside for later. I can get to boning my stays. This will be my second time boning anything in my life. My first try at boning was back in school when we had to make bustiers. I never had to really do boning to support actual breast so let see how this goes.

After doing a little research on boning online, in some books and after reading other costumers' blogs I decide to go with mix of industrial  heavy duty strength zip ties and a a few white spring steel bones. I decided to do this because for one I'm on a tight budget and the zip ties are pretty cheap and I wanted to try using steel bones but not in the whole thing. Most of the spring steel bones are placed in the back and a few on the side. Like I said in an earlier post I kind of threw the instructions out the window from this point on (because I'm crazy) and winged it. My boning is based on what I saw from stays from that century more then what the instructions said. Also like I mentioned in an earlier post I didn't use all the channels I made but that's fine.

Cutting boning and getting ready to bone my stays.

After boning my stays I pinned the third inside layer to the two front layers, basted stitched them together. Making sure all my boning stayed in the channels. Pretty much everything from this point on was going to be hand sewing. So I prepared myself for the next couple of days to work on stuff while catching up on tv shows.

 The next step was to bind the edges of the stays all the way around but I couldn't do that because I didn't have anything to bind  with so I went on and started on my eyelets. Twenty-two hand sewn eyelets, I curse and swear everytime I start doing eyelets but when I am finished I really like the look of them.

very bad pictures taken in my bedroom with very bad lighting

A few days later my binding came in the mail and I could get started on that. Now I had to do a bit of work to get to the point of even getting started on binding my stays. The instructions had said to make your own bias tape to bind the stays. Okay I had got some fabric to make my bias tape and well that was a fail. So I tried using store bought bias tape that I already had at home before going to go buy colors to match, yet another fail. After trying those two options I had no idea what I was going to do.

The next day I was ordering ribbon for another project and I came across some lilac satin ribbon and I decided I would try that out as my binding. I ordered my ribbon, I got 7/8 inch wide ribbon for my binding. I felt 1 inch was just too wide.

Ribbon order from The Ribbon Retreat

The lilac ribbon for my stays, the champagne  ribbon for my pearl necklace and the slate ribbon I got just cause liked the color.

Now I can start binding the stays. I found using the ribbon was easier then using the bias tape so I soldiered on. 

Pinned ribbon binding to stays.

As I posted this blog I am still hand sewing the ribbon. Working an hour or so every day. You can only do so much before your eyes start to see double, your back aches, and your hands are ready to fall off.