But now I'm back on the horse, since a couple of months. I've made myself a bumpad and a decency petticoat but I haven't photographed them yet.
Something I have photographed is my stay making process. Me and Isis finally managed to get togheter a couple of weeks ago and I got my mock up stays fitted. I then adjusted the pattern (I had to make it a lot smaller, some one has lost some body wisdom since the pattern was made). I also made the neckline and the arm hole lower.
Then I cut out the whole shebang in two layers of heavy duty linen twill (= an old bed sheet scored very cheap on a swedish auction site) and outer layer in silver silk dupion. I have decided to make the back pieces half boned, the side front fully boned and the front will be boned with a sun ray pattern (but since my stays are in silver maybe I should write moon rays instead.) The idea for the boning on the front comes from these extant stays found in Norway:
Images from Norsk Folkemuseum's colletion.http://digitaltmuseum.no/things/thing/NF/NF.1914-0210
I have just started with sewing the boning channels. I'm doing it with my trustworthy Husqvarna Zig Zag from the 1950's and I'm using button hole silk twist for top thread and ordinary sewing silk for the bottom thread.
It looks really nice but oh, boy this baby eats thread! This is what I managed to sew with two 10 m rolls worth of thread:
I did do some errors and I'm using the threads I rescued from those to sew the eyelets, last night I managed to get 3 of them done:
The first eyelet was damn near perfect but the last two is not as round as I would like them to be. Oh, well I'm the only one that are going to see them anyway...
One thing learned so far in the process:
It is a great idea to have seam allowances bigger then 1 cm. This will work but bigger seam allowance would have made things a hell lot easier...
/L
