Drawing and altering a stays pattern

Last week I told you about my plans for making a Robe a la Francaise. And a historical costume is nowhere without the proper undergarments. So today I’m working on my new stays. (also, sorry for the bad quality of photo’s in this post, I was working on this late at night, so the lighting was really bad)

The original pattern

I took this pattern from Norah Waugh’s Corsets and Crinolines as a base. However, as Anna-Carin from 18thcstockholm pointed out, this pattern is a mash up from two different ones from Diderot’s L’Encyclopédie.

According to the drawings in Diderot’s work, English style stays have a curved side seam and rounded tabs, while French stays have a straight side seam and and square tabs. This pattern has straight side seams and rounded tabs, so it’s a bit of a mash up of the two. Because I have a larger bust, I chose to go with the English style stays, because the curved side seam gives more bust support.

Enlarging the pattern

 

But how do you get a full size pattern from a little picture in a book? Well, you could try to enlarge the pattern on your computer, but I don’t have the software or printer for that, so I chose to do it by hand. I started by printing the front and back pattern piece on A4 paper size. Next I drew a grit on top of that. I went with a grit of 2×2 cm, but you can chose any size you like. I labeled the squares A through G from left to right and 1 to 12 from top to bottom, for easier reference.

Next, I decided approximately how much the pattern needed to be enlarged. You don’t have to be too precise with this. just take one measurement, for example, the center front length. I decided to draw the pattern two times as large, so I made a grit with 4×4 cm squares. Then, you can copy your pattern by copying the squares one by one. I measured where the lines of the pattern crossed the lines of the grit, and transferred those dots in my larger grit. After that it’s just a simple matter of connecting the dots. I hope my explanation is not too confusing. I found it very easy to do, but it is quite hard to put into words. I chose not to copy the boning channels just yet, because I knew I would probably have to make a few adjustments to get this pattern to fit me right.

Fitting and Alterations

When I had the entire pattern enlarged, I made a few alterations. First, I made the side seam curved, so it matched Diderot’s original stays. I also wanted my stays to be front and back lacing, so I chose to have a 5 cm lacing gap at the back, and a 2 cm lacing gap at the front.

I copied this pattern onto a new piece of paper. Next, I took out my measuring tape and started to compare the pattern to my measurement. I measured the length, waist and bust measurements, and came to the conclusion that the length is pretty good for me, but the waist and bust were about 10 cm too small.

To make the pattern fit me, I used the slash and spread method. These particular stays have 4 pieces (2 front and 2 back pieces). So I divided the amount of  space I needed (10 cm) by 4.  This means I needed to add 2.5 cm to each pattern piece. So I cut my two pattern pieces in half and spaced them out 2,5 cm. Then I cut around the whole thing, and I had my new pattern. If you need to alter the length of your pattern, you can do that the exact same way, by cutting the pattern pieces in half horizontally. You can also make your pattern smaller this way. Just overlap the parts of the pattern to make it smaller instead of spreading it ou

Next it is time for a mock up. I was surprised to see it fit me quite well. I only had a bit to much room in the front. I pinned the stays to fit me, measured the amount I had to take it in, and make a new front panel the exact same way as I described in the last step.

After all that measuring and fitting, The stays pattern is finally complete. So now it is time to draw in the boning pattern. I stayed pretty close to Waugh’s drawing for this one. But depending on how much slashing and spreading you did to alter the pattern, you might need to add or remove a few bones.

Now that the pattern is complete, I can start on constructing the stays. But I will leave that for another blog post.