1790s Stays: Part Three

Now to sew the tiny boning channels. My goal was to complete this in a day, but it took a few days. About ten hours of work total, which isn't horrible. I should have done this project by machine probably... but "nooo I'll do it historically accurate....". Perhaps a mistake. But it became addicting to make all those little rows of tiny stitches, hour after hour! It was actually pretty fun, and something to keep me busy when I'm in my many zoom meetings.

First, I used a craft knife to cut out where the boning channels were on the pattern.

Now I had a big stencil essentially.

Another way you could do this I guess is to take the piece you cut out and lay it overtop.

Tada! Boning channels marked out.

(as you can see, this picture was taken after I started stitching...)

Man, stitching all those little boning channels took a long time, but it was worth it and I think it looks lovely!

Sorry for blurry image... I didn't notice until it was too late! Next, I pinned all the pieces together for a mock-up (unfortunately I didn't take any pictures from this process). My worst case scenario turned out true... the stays are much too big! So for next time, I will work on trimming the stays down.