HSM June ’22: At the Museum

I've just begun my entry for the June HSM challenge and thought I'd go ahead and give some background on how this project came to be. My plan is to finish it by mid-August to wear at my JASNA region's annual retreat. I've splurged and will be staying over for the retreat along with some…

2022/23 Historical Sewing Plans

Since I didn't do a plan at the beginning of the year, being in the throes of my final semester of grad school, I figured I could play catch up now! I am not sure how realistic I am being, as I still have to finish my thesis by the end of summer, and also…

Completed: LM 115 Regency Long Stays (HSM ’22 #1)

This post is a summary of my more long-winded, narrative-style posts about these stays as a work-in-progress: toile, #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5. Progress photos from these posts have not been re-posted here. These stays were sewn in preparation for my thesis work, for which I am recreating a ca. 1810-1815 dress in order…

WIP: LM Regency Long Stays Part 5

Photo by author. Slowly but surely I have come to the end of my stays making project! Starting it in August of 2021, I have finished it in February of 2022. How naive I was to think it would take but a month or two to complete! I will have a "completed project" post up…

WIP: LM Regency Long Stays Part 4

Since my last I posted I really got cranking on finishing these. First, I put in the bust darts that I decided I needed in the last fitting. Left bust dart (interior). Photo by author. Right bust dart (interior). Photo by author. Next, I re-hemmed the CB edge by double folding, as I didn't want…

WIP: LM Regency Long Stays Part 3

Photo by author. Work has not progressed as quickly as I would have liked for this final stretch. I was delayed by the holidays and then by the fact that my sewing room had devolved into a very messy storage space over the past year. After a day and a half spent tidying it, I…

Examining Early 19th C. Long Stays II: Thread Analysis

Click here to read my previous post on the Fiber/Fabric Analysis of these stays. Thread morphology is made up of multiple aspects that can be analyzed: fiber, number of plies and cords, direction of spin for a ply, and direction of twist (the direction individual and multiple plies are twisted together). On non-historical threads one can…

WIP: LM Regency Long Stays Part 2

Photo by author. This past week I managed to get my Laughing Moon #115 stays to the point where I could take them to my mentors for a fitting. I elected not to trim any of the excess added pre-cording yet, just to be on the safe side. I safety pinned the side seams together…

WIP: LM 115 Regency Long Stays

Progress on my stays has gone slow. I seem to have trouble switching back and forth between reading/writing and working with my hands. It is much easier if I can take a half a day or more to work on one sort of work and then switch the next day. This is not the case…

Examining Early 19th C. Long Stays: Fiber/Fabric Analysis

Part of the preparation of my thesis work involves making a pair of long stays appropriate for around 1810-1815. I lucked out when one of my thesis committee members offered up an extant pair that I could examine. My outside committee member, who has been a wonderful mentor since my undergraduate studies, had found them…