It’s that time again — as things go into the stash, other things have to come out! I’ve got a huge online costume garage sale posted here; email me at kendra at demodecouture dot com to purchase. I’m on vacation right now, so I can ship things quickly!
I’m selling: two finished costumes (a sheer 1860s summer dress, and a 1770s robe a la turque), tons of fabric, trims, buttons, appliques, vintage and modern costume patterns, vintage magazines and victorian fashion plates, vintage/modern costume jewelry, yarn, DVDs, and a cool museum poster with a gorgeous 1930s fashion image.
So I’ve tried to make my previous Venetiangowns to varying degrees of historical accuracy, always with some concessions for theatricality and for the fact that the Renaissance is not my toe-curling era (that would be 18th c., where I completely geek out on trying to do things 1000% accurately). This time around, I am trying to make some aspects even MORE historically accurate (shoulder straps; wider CF opening at the bodice waist; contemplating a cartridge-pleated all-the-way-around skirt, but I haven’t decided), and there are other aspects that I’m going for accurate look, theatrical method.
Specifically, this applies to the bodice. Another member of my Renaissance singing group (Bella Donna), Jenn, is a mad sewing demon. She has one of those super left brains that is totally analytical and engineering focused, and she’s come up with some really fabulous construction methods for these dresses — not only has she made a number for herself, but she’s also made them for other members of our group. She’s all about making it look gorgeous but making the construction/wearing as practical as possible; in fact, she has a giant zipper down the front of her stays, and has incorporated a hidden zipper into at least one of her gowns. (Confession time: I was contemplating putting a zipper in my newest corset for this outfit, and then Linda told me that our friend Judith was mock-horrified that my standards were slipping — so all those hand sewn eyelets are for you, Judith!).
So! The point of all this is that I am using her method for bodice construction. Two things she’s figured out that work really well: 1) Jen of Festive Attyre (another Jen!) was one of the first people to attack these dresses, and she came up with a cool method for keeping the center front lacing straight (see her first post in her dress diary). I used this method in my first two gowns and it worked well, but Jenn/Ruby Raven found that the two rows of lacing strips plus spaced 1/4″ boning meant that the bodice crumpled (mostly on the interior) in between the lacing strips. What Jenn/Ruby Raven has done that’s worked so well is to make one wide lacing strip — she used a piece of cotton twill tape, I didn’t have any on hand so used some petersham from my stash — supported by a wide 1/2″ bone. So the lacing area is still wide, but it’s supported throughout by a wide bone underneath.
Creating the lacing channels
What I did was to baste the petersham down so nothing got squidgy, then used a water soluble marker to draw out the lacing channels. Of course, after I took this picture I realized that I’d done some mismeasuring, so I had to redraw these a few times. Then I sewed the horizontal seams of the lacing channels, removed the basting, and sewed vertically down the petersham in between the lacing channels — which means that the lacing channels are open, but there’s no chance of accidentally sticking your lacing needle into the wrong slot, because the non-lacing-channel sections are closed.
Petersham lacing strip sewn down; 1/2" bone underneath inside
Jenn/Ruby Raven attaches the 1/2″ bone to a separate piece of fabric (she suggested a twill), which goes from the CF opening and extends about 4″ into the bodice. This then gets laid in between the lining and the interlining/fashion fabric. She’s found that her underside doesn’t pull, and she doesn’t need to attach the boning/fabric the boning is sewn to to anything else. I tried this, and found that the lining still pulled forward and you could see the petersham/lining:
So I accepted fate and handsewed a channel on the other edge of the boning, through all layers including the fashion fabric, to keep things in place (you can see the handsewing on the finished lacing channel pic above), which I’ll now have to cover with trim (altho in the period, they had to do this too):
But I do think this method is cool, because on my other gowns I DID get some weird crumpling on the lining around the lacing strips, and now I don’t have that on this version.
I found that the shoulder straps stretch given that they’re on the bias, so I ended up having to take off 1″ from the front strap to keep things from totally falling down:
Just found a couple of Venetian portraits that show some curvature in front, and so some distortion of the CF lines. I’m still not going to claim I’m being period accurate, but at least now I know I’m not TOTALLY out of line.
First, I wanted a new corset, as I’m forever trying to avoid the dreaded quadra-boob. I finally accepted that my 1780s stays are the best shape on me for a flat front look, and made a strapless version of these for Renaissance wear. No, it’s totally not period, but I wear these costumes frequently enough that I just want it all to WORK — and we all (in Bella Donna) have made some concessions to theatricality and modern sense of attractiveness vs. historical accuracy. So, long story short, non-period corset shape it shall be, which at least gives me the cone shape.
I draped the bodice based on the fabulous pattern Sarah draped for me for my 1575 Florentine. Obviously I’ll be changing it to a wide front opening with ladder lacing, a lower neckline, and shoulder straps on the shoulder point. On my last two Venetian dresses I didn’t put the shoulder strap quite as far into the armpit as I’ve seen in all the portraiture, but I decided to go for it on this one and hope it doesn’t totally bind my arms!
The one downside to the corset I’m using is that because it curves in at the waist, I can’t get a visually straight line on the front opening of the bodice — it’s straight on the fabric, but because it curves in it LOOKS like it’s a slightly curved seam. Jenn (also in Bella Donna) gets a similar effect on herdresses, so I think it’s just a factor of the non-period corset shape. Judge me all you want!
I’ve been meaning to write this for a while, and finally got organized!
When I went to make my handsewn 1780s stays, I was trying to be as historically accurate as possible, and that brought up the question of boning — what to use? Obviously in the period whalebone was the desired boning, but we can’t get it today and even if we could, I don’t believe in killing endangered species for my hobby/research (sorry, please don’t start telling me about Inuits — THEY’RE AN ENDANGERED SPECIES! Whales, that is).
Most modern costumers who are trying to be as historically accurate as possible use cane/reed. I’ve got an issue with this, and while I posted briefly about boning here, but I realized that I had most of the discussion on LJ.
Here’s my logic: in the period, whalebone was THE preferred boning. Yes, cane/reed were used, but they were considered a substandard material and generally used on homemade (ie not professionally made) stays. Ask anyone who’s made a corset with reed/cane and had it break on them why!
I’m not just talking out of my you-know-what, here’s the research:
The best source is: Dorsey, S.. “For neatness, true fitting, shape and fashion”: The craft and consumption of stays in eighteenth century America. M.A. diss., University of Delaware. Anyone with access to a university library can get a PDF copy of this thesis from the database ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.
Dorsey writes: “The most important part, however, were the “stays” themselves: the garments’ main structural support. The rigid inserts were made from a variety of materials such as wood, thread, and whalebone. Whalebone, otherwise known as baleen, was the most common material and the most expensive. Cheaper alternatives included the use of split wood, steel, pack-thread, and pasteboard.(100) Of those, most pairs of surviving American non-baleen stays are boned with wood. The wooden inserts appear to be made out of riven hardwoods (Figures 21 a and b). Wood is also particularly susceptible to fluctuations in humidity and stress. Over time wood becomes brittle and snaps in two at the stress points, usually on the curve of stay tabs. For this reason it was not an ideal material to use and is typically seen on stays made by an amateur.(101) “Packthread” stays are seen in American stay maker advertisements, where they are also noted to have been imported to America. Packthread is a strong cord or twine made of coarse flax or hemp plied together. Baldwin and Hyer, for example, wrote “that they make Stays with Whale-Bone, which are far preferable for Ease and Genteelness, to those imported from England, that are made of Packthread.”(102) Indeed, whalebone was seen as the superior material in stay making.(103)
(100) Rushes are known to have been used in seventeenth-century stays and were likely used in the eighteenth century. However, in the survey of American stays conducted for this thesis, no pairs were found to exhibit them. Some historians note that bone and ivory were used, but as Mark Hutter pointed out, they would have been too rigid and brittle to function as anything else other than busks. Mark Hutter, email with author, 24 March 2008.
(101) There are no advertisements for wooden stays, it is more likely that they were made by persons who could not afford whalebone (baleen) or the services of a professional stay-maker. Haughland, “Common Cotton,” 3.
(102) Baldwin and Hyer, New York Mercury (New York, NY) 20 May 1765.
(103) Sorge-English, ’29 Doz and 11 Best Cutt Hone’, 30.”
(Bolding is mine)
************* Norah Waugh in Corsets & Crinolines goes far less into this topic, but she does say briefly, in her appendix on whalebone: “When stiffened bodies and farthingales appeared in the sixteenth century it could not have been long before the superiority of whalebone over wood and cane supports brought it into use wherever available” (168).
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Lynne Sorge-English has two articles that are related & interesting. She mentions that whalebone was by far the most popular boning in the 18th c. in: Lynne Sorge-English, “’29 Doz and II Best Cutt Bone’: The Trade in Whalebone and Stays in Eighteenth-Century London.” Textile History v. 36 no. 1 (may 2005): 20-45. The other article, which doesn’t go into this topic but is still very interesting, is: Lynn Sorge, “Eighteenth-Century Stays: Their Origins and Creators.” Costume 32 (1998): 18-32. She’s now come out with a book that I haven’t yet read, but is on my wishlist: Stays and Body Image in London: The Staymaking Trade, 1680-1810 (The Body, Gender and Culture) (full disclosure: I’m an Amazon Associate and buying from that link will send me a couple of cents).
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So to my logic, yes reed/cane is an historically accurate material that we can still get, while whalebone is not something we can get ethically or practically. Since I was trying to make a pair of stays appropriate to an upper class woman, I needed an equivalent to whalebone, not the boning material that would have been used in substandard stays. The properties of whalebone that made it so popular for corsetry was the fact that you could cut it to any width/length/thickness, and the fact that it molds to the body over time.
Now, we come to our modern boning products, most of which are accurate to the Edwardian era or sometime in the 20th century. For a good rundown, I recommend Sarah’s “Various Boning Options for Historical Corsetry” and Jenny-Rose’s “A Word on Boning.”
The main boning type that neither of them discuss is the plastic boning made by Wissner, a German company and so hence often called “German plastic boning.” I had heard good things about this boning material — that it is very comparable to whalebone in terms of support and its ability to mold to the figure — so I decided to try it out, and used it on the handsewn (green) version of my stays.
So, the report!
In the past I have used spring steel (aka white steel), spiral steel, and the crappy plastic boning sold at Joann’s (don’t even get me started). I haven’t used cable ties or cane/reed or any of the other strange and wonderful things you can use as boning! Now that I’ve made up my stays and worn them for over a a year, I can say that the German plastic gives you way more support than the crappy Joann’s plastic, more support than the spiral, and a little bit less support (but not much) than spring steel. In my stays I decided to reinforce things with spring steel at the CF and CB, as well as at 3 points throughout the front piece. I’m currently working on a corset (more on that soon) and just tried it out with only spring steel at the CF and CB, and I felt like I did want one or two more spring steel bones in front.
Bending spring steel (L) and German plastic (R) -- the German plastic requires less force to bend
The best part about the German plastic is it DOES mold to your form. Here’s one half of my 1780s stays laid flat on my cutting table. You can see how the tabs have formed themselves to the shape of my hips:
In addition to its support qualities, you can buy German plastic boning in a number of widths. It’s sold in thicknesses from 13 to 5 millimeters (1/2″, .4″, 1/4″, and 3/8″) at the place I buy from (more on this in a sec). This means you can make corsets with finer boning channels, like this gorgeous pair of stays made by The Staymaker. Here’s a photo of some of the boning I have on hand:
From L to R: spring steel .5", German plastic .5", spring steel 3/8", spring steel 1/4", German plastic 1/4", German plastic 3/8", crappy Joann's boning 3/8"
It is a bit thicker than spring steel, so you’ll want to add a little bit (maybe 1/8″?) to your boning channels to accomodate this.
L to R: spring steel 1/2", German plastic 1/2"L to R: spring steel 1/4", German plastic 1/4", German plastic 3/8", crappy Joann's plastic 3/8"
The German plastic comes in rolls, which means you can cut it to size, and unlike steel you don’t have to use complex tools or dip the ends to cut it (a pair of scissors works just fine).
In terms of where to buy it, the main source in the US (and where I order from) is Vogue Fabrics. They sell all the various widths, and you can buy in rolls of 25 meters or 100 meters. Farthingale’s Canada also sells it, but their website is so annoying I’ve never bothered to figure out if it’s more/less expensive. In the UK, you can buy it from Vena Cava Designs.
(full disclosure: I’m an Amazon Associate and buying from that link will send me a couple of cents).
