revisiting short stays

I have been getting new clients this year, which has been lovely, but will have to take a bit of a break from sewing for other people for a while in order to get caught up on my PhD work. When the whiteboard fills up, I get anxious, because I have given people my word that I would sew for them, and want to keep that word.

So, the last few weeks I have been working on stays, predominantly for a new client, but also for myself. They are a compare and contrast in both cut and fashion, but also class levels. The ones for the client are a regency era historical cut, but covered in fine lace, and so are very delicate. The ones for me are revolutionary period, working class and serviceable. A tale in two class levels for sure!

Making new stays for a new body means trial and error, fixing and tweaking until I am happy with the cut. I hope to have them bound off this week for what will hopefully be the final fitting next week. Then I can drape a bodice for them and get the gown under construction. I also have a shift to make, and a Banyan for their spouse. They are excited to have someone make new clothes for them, and it is infectious, their excitement. If I could afford to hire someone right now, we would be seriously hard at it. But I am just one woman, and so things will get made in due time.

Some in-progress shots of the stays. I will be binding them off again today, after taking them entirely apart to tweak the side pieces. I also stabilized the edge of the lace along the centre back a bit more with some gold thread couched down over the scallop edge. The lace is made up of short pieces of gold thread over the netting, and very fragile. By couching a continuous length of more gold thread on top, those shorter lengths will be held more firmly in place. These stays will never be seen by anyone other than the client and their spouse, and so we can have a bit more fun with their femininity, and make a garment they will feel good wearing. I have to admit, they are really lovely to look at, but they took about all the patience I could find, lots of tiny hand stitches with a tiny needle and silk thread. Most people would have just said, "it can't be done", but I love a challenge.

My own stays, in comparison, are rough and tumble. I am tweaking my own stays pattern again with this set, having taken a large fish out of the seam between the front and side front pieces.

Like my very first set of stays made over 25 years ago now, these will also be green linen with brown stitching. Unlike that first set though, these ones are made from layers of linen and linen canvas, and synthetic whalebone, not the cotton canvas and steel boning from that first set. I also understand the stays making process a whole lot more, and so can fix fit issues I had with the last set (taking out that fish). These ones are going to be mostly machine made, as I have found my backstitch really closely resembles machine, I have a nice machine 'backstitch' and I would like to have these finished before the beginning of the season in May...with all that work on my white board, remember? And a research trip to Nova Scotia in April.

All the bone channels are now in, and last night while watching TV, I started on the great many eyelets I have to do. These will be both front and back lacing, so I can dress (and more importantly undress) myself. The eyelets down the back sections are finished now, the front eyelets will get worked tonight. Then, before too long, I will sew the pieces together, have a quick fitting, and be able to bind these off while I am away. The binding will be done by hand, and I am not sure yet what I want to bind them with, but linen tape is the frontrunner at the moment.

Once I get back from Nova Scotia, I have to get gaiters and a black silk neck stock made up for Pierre before opening weekend. We decided against the expense of the forage cap workshop at the moment, due in large part to me having to fund that trip. He will likely wear his monmouth cap for the weekend. If I can, I'd like to get a brown wool jacket made for him for that weekend as well, as that would have been his dress of the day as a servant over a regimental jacket. While he is smol, his shoulders are still too wide for the servants jacket that the Fort has in stock, and it would be good for him to have his own, so he can feel comfortable getting it all kinds of heritage'd.

After opening weekend, PhD stuff happens in earnest! I have a wardrobe inventory to reproduce, tweaks to make on Pierre's retired highland soldier's clothes, and my Shelburne Loyalists suits to make.

little sketch in the Ross-Thompson House museum

I also have a Regimental for Tommy, stays for Lynn on the whiteboard and any other reproductions I want to make based on my research trip. I have also been researching what the Waldeckers might have been wearing after the war, and wondering about cultural differences there.

I have a busy year ahead of me, stay tuned to watch what's new in the shoe...

Been a while...

My computer died shortly after that last post, and it being in the shop threw my whole game off. Who knew I would be so closely tied to my tech?

Anyhoo...

I spent christmas break knitting tuques for folks, got quite a few of those sent out. I was able to use some lovely hand-dyed Nova Scotia yarn from my sister in law to make up two of them. A grey monmouth for Andrew Kirk down in the southern States, and a lovely blue monmouth for Matt Zembo just north of Albany. I currently have a red French cap on the needles for Joseph Hayden out on the western frontier that I am trying out a new-to-me style of hemming that is more historically accurate than the purl row. I got yet another French cap made up for mon beau frere who fixed my computer, and knit up this modern take on the dutch sailors cap for my friend Lacey in New Brunswick.

So I am currently on tuque 5, I have one more of those on the list, for Jayar, then it's back to stockings.
January was the big push to finish up clothes for Pierre and I to wear to a Federal period event in New York at the Elmendorph Inn in Red Hook.

This was a new-to-us period, really, at this high level of accuracy. So it took a serious amount of work to get everything finished. I also made some clothing pieces for the same event for Tim MacDonald, who came to play fiddle and other fun instruments for the event. And, last minute-like, when my friend Laura was here for an extended weekend visit, we banged out yet another suit for a young gent back home in Nova Scotia. They were able to have a fitting with it this past weekend, and it's shaping up to be a lovely start for this new person to the world of living history. Due to the lack of computer, my instagram got many of the images of these builds. You can check out the photos here... https://www.instagram.com/kellyarlenegrant/?hl=en

The event at Red Hook was a famous success, and, of course, it went into my dissertation! On that note, I sent off the introduction and first chapter to my primary supervisor yesterday, so I will be back in the studio shortly. I have projects I need to get tidied up before I leave for more fieldwork in April.

Right now, I am doing a bit more Federal/Regency/1812 stuff for a couple here in Montreal who portray upper class folks. We have joked that we might turn out to the odd event as their servants, if our schedules allow. I am also rebuilding some of my summer wardrobe based on an inventory of a woman attached to the 84th RHE, done in Halifax, also for the dissertation. I cut new stays the other day, of layers of linen and linen buckram. My old stays are still serviceable, but I have wanted to tweak the shape, and make a better set. Things have been busy in the shoe!