 It's Rebecca at Timesmith Dressmaking here. Welcome to part 2 in my series of videos documenting how I am making a new pair of stays using the art drafting method outlined in Patterns of Fashion 5 in the style of the 1760s stays detailed in the same book on pages 100-103. Part 1 in this series covered the drafting of the pattern. You can go check that out on my channel, I'll put the link below. For part 2 I'm making a mock-up from that pattern to test the size, shape and fit. One thing I learned from my stays workshop with Luca Costiglioli at the School of Historical Dress last year was the importance of making your mock-up with the same materials and structure as the stays you intend to make. This means I am building this mock-up using the tough interlinings and all the boning that I want to use for my stays. Without that structure I just can't judge the fit. The fundamentals of fit relate to the landmarks on your body. Not so much the numbers or the measurements like how big around or how long, how short but where the parts of your body that interact with your stays that demand support or ease actually are. Things like the placement of your shoulder blades, insertion points of glute muscles the shape of the arms eye for range of motion location of the front arms eye point for side support for your bust the curvature of the waist according to the shape of your lower rib cage and how much space you have between the rib cage and the pelvis. All these things aren't necessarily fully revealed in taking measurements and drafting the pattern but you need to check them all and find solutions for any issues you find before you move on to the final build. Catching up between the pattern drafting and now embarking on the mock-up I need to take the pattern that I drafted and transfer it onto fabric the interlinings fabrics that I'm going to use. Remember I need two sets cut of each pattern piece as the stays will have two layers of interlinings to contain the boning. You'll see I'm working with the fabric laid out flat not with a center lengthwise fold. Instead the whole roll of my linen ticking is up on my work table with a length rolled out towards me. I simply fold it back on itself to get the two layers. This still works because the pattern pieces are laid out on grain. It's easy to keep the selvages together and stay on grain and this produces pieces cut the same way as if I had folded the fabric lengthwise but this setup lets me work more comfortably from the end of the table only rolling out the fabric as I need it and only as much as I need rather than committing to a certain length in advance and cutting it. Once I've got enough fabric rolled out and doubled back to fit my pattern pieces on it then the other crucial aspect to remember is to pin and secure the pieces according to the grain line needed for each piece. The two sets of the center front pieces for this particular pair of stays need to meet in the middle on the bias. Here I'm putting it at the front of the arm's eye down into the front peak and on this mock-up I laid out the pattern piece almost spot on with what I intended to but as you'll see in the final fitting I actually had drawn the front arm's eye point too far forward so in correcting that, eventually, that affects where the grain line is going to be. I corrected that in the final draft but you won't see that until we get to that stage in a future video. Then I need to baste the layers together so that they don't shift to have to treat them as one while stitching boning channels. I need to decide which width of boning I'm going to use. I'm taking as careful a measurement of the boning channels in the drawings in the book as I can then checking the scale of the grid so I can scale it up. I make these out to be just over one millimeter in the drawings so at a wonderful ratio and allowing for my size being larger than the extant size and I do want to use roughly the same number of bones as in the original I'm going to round up to five millimeter as the width of boning that I will use. Next I need to determine the angle that my boning will run through these pattern pieces. I start by checking the fabric grain which was the basis of how I laid out my pattern pieces to try to match what patterns of fashion shows about the extant pieces. I draw the first line along the grain in a central position on the piece so that I can calculate the rest of the boning channels as being measured out from that. I establish my starting line on one of the front pieces then carefully mark corresponding endpoints on the other front piece so that the chevron effect that these two front pieces give will appear as close to level or even as possible not lopsided. Doing this part flagged up that the two front pieces were not cut out exactly on the same grain line that's not ideal but for a mock-up I think I'm within a decent margin of error here. The front side pieces as well as the side backs have got boning channels that curve. I spent quite a lot of time setting the patterns of fashion drawing to figure out how I wanted mine to be I drew and redrew a lot. I even redrafted the outline shapes of the skirts themselves a few times and I eventually even re-basted the skirt parts of the pattern pieces in red thread and I shaded in with a pen all the parts of the fabrics that I did not intend to fill with bones. I'm taking extra care to not lose track of the art from the master pattern draft for both the natural waist and the dropped waist. I also have to be careful not to get so lost in the detail of drawing channels that I lose sight of the overall proportions also to bear in mind where the eventual seams are going to be to join up the pieces I'm relying on past experience with how my whip stitching goes as this can effectively shrink or widen the actual widths of your final pattern pieces and that will impact the size of the maca plotting the boning channels for the side back pieces which are sometimes called the Eiffel Tower pieces that's the toughest part for me the extant pieces have nearly the same width from top to bottom where mine are quite a lot wider at the waist than at the top after quite a lot of experimenting I realized I'm going to have a lot of short boning channels with bones that do not extend from top to bottom these will need to be positioned in ways that make sense in terms of spreading load from the full length bones to support them without creating any weak points that might fold or crease or collapse I'm relying on previous experience and what I think I understand of basic engineering principles I had a few false starts on determining the placement for the full length bones but that was fairly straightforward the fiddly bit is mapping out how best to place the shorter bones once I've drafted a boning pattern I'm happy with then the question is how best to transfer it to the corresponding piece on the other side of the body in the end I used a fine Sharpie marker to make it absolutely clear to me which of my various crisscrossing draft lines are the ones that I want then I traced that pattern out on paper and transferred onto the other panel with yep, old fashioned carbon paper and a stylus pen with all the channels stitched in it's time to cut the boning and fill all those channels I don't file the ends instead I cut them at the angle that I estimate I need to match the ends of the channels with the goal being to produce a smooth line once all the bones are in place just yet, if they're going to need eyelets but meanwhile all the other panels can be whipped together now that they've been boned I start with the two front panels using doubled 35 over 2 linen thread about 6 to 8 stitches per inch taking care to go through all the stitches that are folded in there I've got one side front piece attached I'm now starting the other it's important to remember which side of your work is the outside and which is the inside I need to keep track of which direction my seam allowances all those folded back bits are pointing to make sure I don't confuse that I also do wax my thread even for a mock up as it just makes the thread behave better which takes a bit of stress out of this process for some seams I'm joining edges with different degrees of curves so there's a certain amount of let's call it easing that I need to do this helps give shape to the stays it's perhaps not crucial to the finished shape but it forms the foundation of all the internal structure built in later so getting this basic shaping in will help I work hard to remember this even in a mock up where I'm not going to be doing all the internal enforcement work I want to train my brain to remember what's involved and not risk forgetting small, crucial steps like this in the final construction it's around this stage in making the mock up that I decide to continue in ways that it would make the mock up more convertible, more easily convertible into wearable stays if the end result has a good fit so that with minimal unpicking and then fitting cover pieces over each panel I would end up with smooth covered stays and not have to start completely from scratch and do all the boning channels again what's going on here is the realization that my ongoing hand and wrist problems that are presumed to be some kind of tendonitis mean that hand stitching my final stays would not be a good idea converting a decent fitting mock up into a wearable style with the machine stitched boning channels all covered up seems like a good way to progress with the project to get closer to making the big chins gown so with that now my goal I will go back and tend to things like trimming and felling seam allowances to ensure that when it comes time for the fitting the actual size and shape of all the pieces and the overall garment will be clear and unambiguous so it will be easier to diagnose fitting issues this kind of finishing in a mock up adds a bit to the unpicking and remaking process but should help eliminate uncertainties going forward on to attaching the side back pieces these seams again have curvature with the curved edges of the pieces being joined being slightly different in the curvature and shaping so before stitching I match up the markings for the top line on both pieces then double check where that dropped waist arc falls on both pieces mark them carefully clip that end of the seam to be worked and then check exactly how much splay or excess there is in one piece or the other against the other piece so I know how much easing may be involved the easing is going to be done by my hands as I tension the pieces as I stitch now turning to the back pieces I have already inserted bones into the boning channels closest to the seam that will attach to the rest of the stays I intend to use wider, thicker bones for the far edge at the center back just as we see in the extant stays but I need to order more so for now I'm just going to double up on the same 5mm boning that I've been using everywhere else in this markup the row of eyelets will sit just inside this bone and I encase this thick bone with the folded over seam allowance and pin it down I prepare both back pieces this way then check they're even and symmetrical with each other before I stitch in those last bones I double check the point where the seam needs to end when attaching to the side back pieces and make sure it's clearly marked this end point needs to be in line with the dropped waist arch by ending the seam here it leaves the skirts free to shape to the body over the flanks free of the back peak I double check my marks on the back pieces and the stays themselves against the arch on the master pattern that I drafted just to be sure I've got that seam right and I now know the length that the eyelets need to fit into I'm going to measure and mark for a spiral lacing pattern now for eyelets I use a sharp metal awl to create the hole a pair of small forceps to enlarge it and a blunter bone awl to smooth the fibers and shape the hole I stitch with waxed, doubled 35 over 2 linen thread working around each hole in two passes each pass usually being six stitches spaced as evenly as I can so the first pass of six stitches secures the hole and the second pass fills it in I work with a thread length that's comfortable enough to work two eyelets before tying off and starting another thread and now to whip the back panels onto the stays any seam allowances that I think might it's best if the body of the marker to get into them different to my old stays as they should slow this down to real time and take a good look the questions are is the marker, is it too short too long too big around too small around maybe too big in the bust too small in the waist that can vary where does the top line hit is the arm side the right size and shape, is it in the right place what about the top edge of the back it's really hard to assess fit on yourself unless it's absolutely perfect straight out of the box and you know it and sometimes it's just a few minor things aren't quite right and with the experience you know how to spot them and how to fix them without needing a second opinion here I'm pretty sure I know what's going on but because changing one thing always has a knockout effect on others and because my original plan was to be drafting and making these with instruction and support from Luca Costaglioli I took my mock up photos and videos over to the 18th century stays fitting group on facebook to get some feedback several people confirmed the problems with the fit that I had spotted Nell in particular knew what I needed to change in the pattern to fix those problems and a few days later Luca himself dropped by and gave some great feedback back in suggestions too so the pattern has been revised new front panels cut and it's now time to make stays if you found this video helpful or interesting entertaining please click like if you feel my content is worthwhile and would like to see my channel grow please click subscribe and please do leave me comments on how I'm doing and what I can do to improve both in my filmmaking and in sharing clear content that you feel is beneficial to your historical projects