Power cuts can be useful sometimes...

On Wednesday this week, the power was out for almost a whole day and night. I could not work in my sewing studio, since I needed the electricity for both the machines and the light. (I currently only have artificial light in the studio but my lovely M are going to install a window for me).

So I had nothing else to do than resort to my hand sewing. First I embroidered on my pocket until I ran out of thread. Then I started to painstakingly remove the cream colored lambs leather I had bound the edges of my stays with. Oh, my what tiny stitches I had used :/

When that was done I started to remove all the bones. I was astonished when I discovered that it was only the horisontal, the shoulder bones, the center back ones and the longest side bones that were broken. The rest were completely intact.

I decided to go on and replace all om them any way, because I still think synthetic whale bone is better boning material. I also discovered that the pre cut crinoline steel I had ordered for CB was to shoort. I must have done a complete screw up when I measured the lenght of them or I screwed up the numbers when I wrote them down. (I hate having dyscaculia, it truly sucks sometimes). So now I have for precut and dipped lenghts that are completley useless for this project :(

Instead of the crinoline steel I now plan to use spring steel bomig, the same as I used in my pocket hoops. (I just have to find it, it's somewhere in the house or in my studio...) It's rather sturdy even though it's only 7 mm wide so I think it will work. I will put two lenghts in each channel though just to be sure of good support for the lacing. I will use the same steell boning on the horisontal boning too since I've read in Corstes & Crinolines that this was a common method for good bust support.

This evening I altered my straps and added some more boning channels and I will spend the rest of the night cutting, smoothing the edges and putting in plastic bones in my stays while watching this documentary of Marie Antoinette (again) and drool over the black/white and pink/white striped polonaise I want to make.

To finish this horribly long post, here are a picture of my pocket (again):


And one of my stays before I started to remake them: