Something fun for the end of the weekend: a little documentation of how much Felicity helped with the Augusta Stays.
From the cutting out:
To making buckram:
To boning the stays:
And to all the hand-sewing:
Including the unpicking of handsewing…
(note sad kitty)
So much work! Look at how exhausted she is:
What a helpful kitty!
I always get a bit gushy about how amazing the pattern testers for Scroop Patterns are (with good reason), but the testers for the Augusta Stays deserve an extra round of credit.
The Augusta Stays are by far the most ambitious pattern I’ve ever attempted, and they took Virgil’s Fine Goods and I easily 4x as long as any other pattern.
An ambitious pattern for the maker means an ambitious pattern for testers. Stays are no small undertaking at any time. We’re incredibly grateful for the wonderful sewers who were willing to check a new pattern, and to work with it when it still had rough bits to be smoothed off.
Thanks to the testers, the Augusta Stays are a much better pattern. Their input helped us to refine the fit of the stays, and make the instructions clearer and easier to use.
And the testers made some beautiful stays. I’m very envious of all of them! They are a little different than the final pattern that we released. Some of the testers tried slightly different materials and techniques than those recommended in the pattern, which allowed us to see how they worked, and how feasible they are.
Here are the tester makes!
Yellow was a major theme amongst the Augusta testers. Obviously I’m a fan! Alex made the View A Historical stays, in size 44, Curvy, in gorgeous butter yellow. Her binding is so beautiful!
We gave the Augusta testers the option to combine views. Katie made the View A Historical stays, with machine stitched channels to speed up the process, in size 34, Straight. Isn’t the result lovely? The blue grey she chose is so elegant.
I always learn interesting things asking for testers. One of the things I learned with the Augusta Stays is how many amazing historical sewers there are in Indiana. We couldn’t use all of them because we need testers from all over the world, but it was fantastic to have Jessica as a tester. She made the View B Theatrical stays in Size 36, Curvy. And in another wonderful shade of yellow, which goes beautifully with her sunflower background…
Jessica used cable ties instead of synthetic whalebone for her stays – to make this work you just need to make the boning channels a little wider to accomodate the different thickness.
You’ve already seen Cait’s stays, because I got to use her as a pattern model, but she was officially part of the testing group. She made View A, Historical, in Size 46, Curvy. Her fabric is a fine wool twill from Burnley and Trowbridge.
Cait could have gone up a size, but prefers a wider lacing gap. She also made a couple of other alterations based on her stay preferences: adding reinforcing tape to the back lacing, and using cane instead of synthetic whalebone. If you’re experienced in working with cane, this is an easy adaptation to make to the pattern.
Eloise decided to do the View A, Historical, with all the bells and whistles. She cut a size 34, Straight, as she wanted her stays to lace completely closed.
She bound her stays in leather – this is another thing that is easy to add to the Augusta Stays if you know how to do leather stay binding.
And finally, for the last one, something a little bit different. Molly hadn’t quite finished her Augusta Stays at Costume College, and she had a day when she needed to have her hair curled for the evening event, so she turned the two into an awesomely wacky outfit! Molly made View A, Historical in size 36, Straight, graded out to a 38 at the waist. She opted for shorter front lacing. I love this and can’t wait to see them fully finished!
Thank you to all the awesome testers! We are so grateful for your input!
Last week’s Rate the Dress was a risky pick: a dress devoid of any trim, and shown without any styling or accessories. Did it work? This week’s Rate the Dress is equally risky, but in the opposite way. It has all the styling and accessories. Will the look be a little too much, or just right?
Well, the risk paid off, because most of you loved the shape of the dress, and the perfection of the pattern matching. The few of you who didn’t like it admitted that the 1970s had ruined those shades for you!
Oooooh, even better than the week before!
This week I’ve decided to stay in the 18th century, with a 1780s outfit, in honour of the 1780s Augusta Stays. However, I’m doing something quite different: featuring a fashion plate instead of an extant garment. It’s been a long time since Rate the Dress has been a fashion plate…
Redingotes were female garments with a decidedly masculine twist. While nominally practical, like the riding habits they were originally derived from, by the 1780s they had become decidedly fashion focused.
While the example we are looking at has a wide collar and revers, deep cuffs, and double breasted front all borrowed from riding habits and menswear, the colour, fabric, and accessories are anything but practical. This redingote is made in violet purple silk taffeta, and paired with a delicate muslin or gauze petticoat, which is decorated with spotting and stripes: probably embroidered on to the fabric.
The hat, to match the summery muslin of the petticoat, is straw, in that most-fashionable of 18th century shades: puce.
What do you think at this fashionably impractical version of a once sensible dress? How will you feel about the 18th century version of designer jeans with carefully arranged wear marks and ‘ventilation’?
A reminder about rating — feel free to be critical if you don’t like a thing, but make sure that your comments aren’t actually insulting to those who do like a garment. Phrase criticism as your opinion, rather than a flat fact. Our different tastes are what make Rate the Dress so interesting. It’s no fun when a comment implies that anyone who doesn’t agree with it, or who would wear a garment, is totally lacking in taste.
(as usual, nothing more complicated than a .5. I also hugely appreciate it if you only do one rating, and set it on a line at the very end of your comment, so I can find it! And 0 is not on a scale of 1 to 10. Thanks in advance!)
