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An interview on whakarongo – Der Neuseeland Podcast!

Perfectly timed as a follow-up to my post about pretty pink Schloss Benrath, here’s what I did after touring the palace!

I was interviewed as a guest on Ripeka’s wonderful podcast about New Zealand!

The first few minutes are in German, and then it switches to English* and me meandering through how I met Ripeka, how I ended up doing what I do, WWI from a New Zealand perspective, STDs, the Fortnight in 1916 experience, bad moustaches, the cultural universality of socks and sandals, where to shop in Wellington, and things I loved in Germany…

So kind-of everything!

Here’s the dress we talk about:

In the Roman baths in the Cluny Museum, thedreamstress.com

I bought it specifically for the trip, because it’s rayon crepe can be bundled up without needing ironing, is easy to wash, has pockets, and is long enough and covers my shoulders and arms enough that I felt comfortable going in to churches whilst wearing it.***

I’m sitting in the Roman bathhouse in the lowest story of the Cluny Museum in that photo. The oldest human-built thing I saw in Europe!

And here’s the Ettie Petticoat and a post all about Ettie Rout.

The Scroop Patterns Ettie Petticoat View A Scrooppatterns.com

* Because my German vocabulary is pretty much limited to nein, danke, lecker, fledermaus, and schadenfreude**…

**Fledermaus & Schadenfreude is my indie band name. Or the main characters in my offbeat comedic detective novel series, which is written so you can never actually tell if the characters are all human, or if Fledermaus is actually a bat (or a vampire…) and Schadenfreude is actually a mole. Schadenfreude is blind. Like Justice. His girlfriend is Carlotta, but her daughter calls her Car-ma instead of mother.

***Although I needn’t have worried about that bit! In Paris I watched Italian† women in hot pants and off-the shoulder, midriff-baring tops pose provocatively for social media snaps in front of the altar in the oldest cathedral in Paris.

† There were lots of women in very skimpy attire in the cathedral, but the ones where I could definitively identify the country they were from were Italian. It very much surprised me – another one of my preconceptions about how people from a particular country would behave shattered! I have a very ingrained, and clearly outdated, image of Italy being one of the places where women very much cover their shoulders when entering a church.

Cassandra Stays by Klara Posekana @klara_posekana Scrooppatterns.com

The stunning Cassandra Stays tester makes!

Published by The Dreamstress

It’s the absolute best part of a pattern launch: time to show off the tester makes!

Pattern testers are super fabulous from our end, because they help us ensure we deliver you the best possible pattern. They ask about instructions that are confusing. They provide feedback on the fit on a whole range of bodies. Based on their input we’re able to smooth off any final rough corners, and adjust the fit to make sure it will work for as many people as possible straight out of the packet – and that we have good fit and alteration guidance for when it doesn’t.

Pattern testers are super fabulous for you because their photos show what the pattern looks like styled in a whole range of different ways, on a whole range of bodies, in different fabrics. There are always testers who do gorgeous things with the pattern that never even occurred to me! So inspirational! 💛

So we are so very, very grateful to the people who are willing to pattern test, because their input makes our patterns so much better in ever way. Thank you so much!

Testing stays is a particularly big ask, and our testers for this round were not only phenomenally helpful with feedback – they made the most stunning collection of Cassandra Stays. Here they are!

View B:

Mem of @starandscissor

We always like to have a mix of new testers (for new perspectives) and testers we have worked with before (so we know our instructions and fit are consistent), and when Mem applied to test we were very excited to have her, because she did such a beautiful job with her Aidah Gown. She did an equally beautiful job with here Cassandra Stays, and sent us so many excellent photos showing the lovely shape they create:

Not only did Mem provide images of the stays, she also took photos of them worn under her Aidah gown, so you can see how they look under a garment. So helpful!

And now I love this dress even more than I did when she first made it!

Mem made View B, Theatrical, in Size 46 Curvy, with 5/8’’/1.5cm added to the top edge of the stays. She used cotton coutil for her stays in white – a perfect neutral base for her fabulous outfits!

Spencer of @thimbleraven

You’re going to see a lot of pink and purple in this post, because those were the colours of the season when it came to the Cassandra Stays testing group (I approve. Cassandra is a pinky-purple name). First up is this delightful peach pair by Spencer:

Spencer made View B, and combined the instructions, doing the hand-worked eyelets and hand-sewn binding from the Historical instructions, and doing everything else by machine. And, as you can see, the result is lovely!

Look at that perfectly even lacing gap!

Spencer made a Size 52. Her outer fabric is linen, and the support fabric is two layers of cotton canvas.

She said of the pattern “It’s a great pattern! I’d even recommend it to advanced beginner or intermediate sewists as a first stays pattern. The boning channels are straightforward and easy to sew after marking just the guideline channels. The shape of the panels makes it fairly straightforward to tweak with any fit issues if needed. Having a front lacing option is wonderful for those who struggle with (or don’t enjoy) lacing themselves in from behind. ”

Be sure to check out her instagram to see her beautiful Sophia Mantle, and Aidah Gown, and Marie Mantle, and Amalia Jacket, and Persis Corset (I think she’s working her way though all our patterns!)

Nina of @ninavirgo

Nina was both a tester, and a model. And she’s my pattern editor! And general partner in crime…

She’s the best kind of friend: the kind who supports you, but also tells you when you can do better, so I absolutely trust her to point out anything that could be improved with a pattern. Which she did!

And she made a beautiful pair of Cassandra Stays, with a teeny bit of help from me (I did her front eyelets because I love doing eyelets) and then we got to have a delightful and hilarious, if very sticky, photoshoot on a day that set temperature records for Wellington (only for them to be broken the next day!)

I’m not kidding about hilarious. Here’s a few of Nina playing ‘My precious’ and ‘What’s she got in her pocketses’ with a pinecone.’

She just really loves pinecones…

(and we really love her sneaky weather appropriate shoes!)

Nina is wearing View B: Theatrical in Size 46 Straight Fit in saxon blue linen bound with cotton tape. Nina is 5’2” and her stays have been shortened 1/2”/1.2cm. Her stays are worn laced open over a stomacher for a comfortable fit. They can be laced fully closed for a more high-fashion fit. She has mixed the Historical and Theatrical pattern and instructions, with the Theatrical pattern, machine sewing, but hand-worked eyelets and tape binding.

View A

Cecilia of @cecilia_theresa_design

Cecilia is another repeat tester who made the Aidah Gown, but this time she wasn’t sewing for herself. She collaborated with her friend Jasmin of @mangaliker148 and made her this utterly stunning pair of Cassandra Stays:

Based on their glorious photos by Lars of @till.0.36, they had just as much fun as Nina and Jenni and I had at our shoot!

The yellow and purple combination is so striking, and the fit and finish of her stays is perfection.

Jasmin and Cecilia’s stays are View A: Historical in Size 38 Curvy Fit, with straps. She added 3/8”/1cm to the front bust upper edge. The stays are made from purple linen, and bound in purple linen tape. They have been made with a larger lacing gap, so they can also be worn by the model in a smaller size.

Summer @summers.stitchery

You just get to see one photo of Summer’s stunning stays, but it’s glorious enough that that’s enough.

I’m delighted that one of the testers did laddered ribbon ornamentation down the front of their stays! The effect is just gorgeous, and a lovely nod to some of the extant stays we based the pattern on.

Summer made View A with the View B ’Theatrical’ construction methods. Her sea green fashion fabric is flatlined with black cotton sateen, with a layer of coutil for more strength and a cotton lining.

She made the Size 38 Curvy, with an extra 1’’/2.5cm added to the front panel, and 3/8’’/1cm cut away under the arms.

Rebecca of Duchess of Downs Street

Not only did Rebecca make the most glorious pink brocade View A stays:

She styled her hair to absolute perfection, had the most delightful accessories, AND got photographs of herself with her cat!

Truly, that is the way to my heart!

And not only that, but she included progess shots all the way through, and final interior images:

The interior of stays with bust rail by Rebecca of Duchess of Downs Street

Rebecca’s stays are made of linen with a silk outer. She used the Historical instructions, but sewed her boning channels by machine, and made Size 32, Straight, without straps.

Irwin of @irwin.tseing

Remember how I said that pink and purple were the themes for the Cassandra Stays testers? Well brace yourself for the epitome of pink brocade stay gorgeousness:

Utterly divine!

Like us, Irwin was coping with the Southern Hemisphere summer swelter, so he styled his stays with shorts (very smart!), but if you head over to his IG you can see them with a beautiful pink silk petticoat (and enjoy all the other gorgeous things he’s made).

He made View A, but using the Theatrical construction methods for faster sewing, and his stays are Size 40, Curvy. And look at the curves they give!

Jessica of @scotchirish1775

For the final entry in the parade of pretty pinks and purples, Jessica’s charming stays in a lovely mauve made from linen dyed with logwood – totally accurate to the 18th century, and one of the ways they achieved purple in-period.

Her stays are bound in yellow lambskin, so you can see how the leather binding techniques in the pattern look on a finished bind (so tiny and neat!)

Jessica had to take her photos inside because of the weather, but made up for cramped interiors by including images of the interior of her stays before lining. And who doesn’t love a shot of the guts of a garment so you can see how it is all put together!

Leather bound stays by Jessica of @scotchirish1775

Klára of @klara-posekana

Klára may be the last entry in the tester roundup, but she is definitely not last in how beautifully made and finished her stays are, nor in how helpful her feedback was. She has the most amazing editor eye, and caught everything in the pattern that was confusing, or mislabelled, or coloured wrong in the instruction images.

Her exquisite stays are testament that her eye for detail isn’t just confined to paper.

Every element is perfect and precise. They are entirely hand sewn. She made Size 48 Straight Fit, with straps. Her stays are made from brown linen, and bound in ivory kid leather.

She even took photos at totally appropriate locations: an 18th century living history museum, and a church built in the early 18th century (which also happens to look like the perfect fairytale location)

Once again, a massive, massive thanks to all the testers for their work and feedback and the glorious inspiration they provide!

Get the Cassandra Stays at ScroopPatterns.com!

The Augusta Stays vs The Cassandra Stays thedreamstress.com

The Augusta Stays & The Cassandra Stays – what’s the difference?

Published by The Dreamstress

We’ve had so many questions about the difference between the Scroop + Virgils Fine Goods Augusta Stays and the Scroop + Virgil’s Fine Goods Cassandra Stays that I’m bumping the planned blog post about that up the queue and answering it before I even share the (absolutely amazing!) tester makes.

Although the Augusta and Cassandra Stays are both 18th century stays, they are quite different patterns. Here’s how, and which you should choose depending on what you want as a costumer!

(pssst, don’t forget that the Cassandra Stays are 15% off until Thur 22 Feb, midnight NZDT)

Silhouette & Date – the difference between the two styles

The Augusta Stays are based on extant stays & stay patterns dating to between 1775 and 1789, such as this pair:

Stays, Great Britain, 1780-1789, Linen, hand sewn with linen thread, applied ribbon, chamois and whalebone, VAM T.172-1914

(learn more about the extant stays that inspired the Augusta pattern here)

Stays of this style are fairly short-waisted, with partial front lacing which makes the bust fit adjustable. The goal of these stays was to create a short, curvaceous silhouette, with a ‘prow front’ that thrust the bust forward like this: )

See how Amber’s torso curves out slightly in her Augusta Stays:

Obviously the bustier you are (or the more you are willing to pad that area!) the easier it is to achieve the fashionable prow front!

The Cassandra Stays, on the other hand, are based on extant stays and patterns from between 1760 and 1780, such as this pair:

Pale blue glazed woollen damask over stiff foundation, lined with white linen. Bound with pale blue twilled wool, 1947.1622 Manchester Art Gallery

And this pair:

Missouri Historical Society Canvas stays (corset) stiffened with paste. (1775)

And this pair:

Stays, National Museum Scotland, Linen & Cane, 1765-75 A.1905.983

The goal of this style of stays was to create an elongated, conical torso with a front silhouette that angle out smoothly, like so: \. They often used a curved bust rail to create a rounded front to the top of the bust, rather than a flat front.

You’ll notice that there is a 5-year overlap with the 1760-1780 Cassandra Stays, and the 1775-1789 Augusta Stays. That’s because fashions rarely end abruptly: instead, they transition from one to the next. So between 1775-1780 it would have been common to see fashionable women wearing either styles of stays. Women who couldn’t afford new stays, or preferred earlier styles, might have continued to wear the Cassandra style up until the end of the 18th century.

While both the Cassandra Stays and the Augusta Stays have specific date ranges, we have been conservative in our dating, particularly for the Cassandra Stays. There are numerous examples of stays that are dated to earlier than 1760 which have similar pattern pieces and boning layouts to the Cassandra Stays, such as these two examples:

Corset (Stays), 1740–60, American, linen, leather, whalebone, Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Jason and Peggy Westerfield Collection, 1969, 2009.300.3330a–d

Woman’s Corset (stays), France, circa 1730-1740, Silk plain weave with supplementary weft-float patterning

However, as we were not able to examine any of the stays we found with earlier dates in person to determine if they were correctly dated, and to see how closely their pattern and construction matched the Cassandra, we stuck to 1760-1780 as a date range. The Cassandra Stays could definitely create an entirely plausible silhouette for 1730-60 costuming, particularly if worn without the bust rail, so they have a flatter front.

The Augustas can be worn for later 1790s looks if you are not aiming for an extremely fashionable silhouette. While they wouldn’t be entirely accurate for earlier decades, if, for example, you were travelling with limited luggage and could only take one pair of stays the Augusta’s would look OK to all but the most experienced historical costumer eye under costumes from 1740-1775 if you wear them with a busk slipped down the front.

Boning & Boning Layouts

The Augusta and Cassandra stays use different types of boning, and have distinctly different boning layouts.

The Augusta Stays are half-boned, meaning that there are spaces between the bones in the stays:

Note how the bones fan out from the bottom point, with increasing gaps between each bone.

In order for the stays to be strong enough to shape you while still having gaps, the Augusta Stays call for 6mm wide bones.

The Cassandra Stays, on the other hand, are fully boned. This means that there are no gaps between the bones in the stays:

Cassandra Stays by Klara Posekana @klara_posekana

All of the extant stays that we studied to develop the Cassandra pattern had very narrow boning: much narrower than the 6mm wide boning used in the Augusta Stays.
To match this look, we chose the narrowest widely available synthetic whalebone width: 4mm. This width is the closest match to most of the stays we looked at, and really highlights the spectacular V shape of the bones meeting at the front of the stays.

For extra support the pattern calls for wider 6mm boning which frames the lacing holes. Most of the stays we looked at also had a mix of bone widths.

Finally the Cassandra pattern has an optional bust rail: a curved horizontal bone which created the very rounded front fashionable in the 1760s and 1770s. Historically these were usually made of whalebone or metal, but we’ve developed a way to replicate the look in cane. Bust rails were also used in the 1780s, so if you wished you could easily use the bust rail instructions in the Cassandra pattern to add a bust rail to your Augusta Stays.

The interior of Cassandra Stays with bust rail by Rebecca of Duchess of Downs Street

Pattern pieces

The Augusta Stays have four panels (front, side front, side back, back) going around the body on each half of the stays.

When developing the Cassandra Stays Amber studied a couple of pairs of five panel stays as inspiration (front, side front, side, side back, back), and was intrigued by how much the extra panel let you refine the fit of the stays. We also realised that none of the available patterns for stays in this style (including the scale ones in Patterns of Fashion 5, and Stays or a Corset) were five panel stays, so a five panel pattern filled a useful gap in the market.

Cassandra Stays by Klara Posekana @klara_posekana Scrooppatterns.com

Centre Fronts & Front Lacing

The Augusta Stays can be made in either the Theatrical Version, with a solid front with no centre front seam, or in the Historical version, with a centre front seam and partial lacing.

The half-lacing on the Historical version adds to the prow front effect, and is adjustable, while the Theatrical version with no centre-front seam gives a straighter silhouette. (and either version can be made even more prow-front-y by following this tutorial for adding more bust space in the Augusta Stays)

View B ‘Theatrical’ Augusta Stays

The Cassandra Stays, on the other hand, can be made with either a closed front with centre-front seam in the Historical version, or with front lacing and an optional stomacher, in the Theatrical version.

The Fitting and Alterations guide given with the Cassandra Stays includes instructions on adapting the front seam of the stays to achieve different effects.

Front and back lacing on stays of this style is a feature that is infrequently seen in extant stays (although there are a few examples), which is why we have chosen to make it the Theatrical version. It makes for extremely adjustable stays: they can be laced fully closed front and back, slightly open in both, with the front lacing with a wider gap at top and less at the bottom. It’s even possible to create a fit and lace them to give that prow-front effect, as we did in the View B sample photos featuring Jenni (a blog post on exactly how we did that coming soon!)

Binding

There are numerous places in the instructions where we chose slightly different techniques for the Cassandra Stays compared to the Augusta Stays, just so you’d learn new things if you bought both patterns, but the biggest difference is in the binding options.

The Augusta stays include instructions on binding with tape or straight-cut fabric in the Historical instructions or with bias-cut fabric in the Theatrical instructions.

The Cassandra stays include all of those options, AND instructions on binding with leather: a type of binding frequently seen in extant stays, but one which uses a different set of techniques to the other types of binding.

Leather bound stays by Jessica of @scotchirish1775

So, which one should I buy?

Well, obviously we think they are both amazing patterns and you should buy both! But if you’re deciding which one to start with, think about what you want to wear over them.

Do you mostly do pre-1780 costuming? Then go with the Cassandra Stays.

Do you mostly do 1780s & 90s costuming? Go with the Augusta Stays.

Is being able to put on the stays by yourself with minimal wriggling an absolute must? Go with the Cassandra Stays (unless you are confident altering the Augustas to be front lacing, which many costumers have done successfully).

To finish it off, here’s Amber of Virgils Fine Goods in her final unfinished fit test for the Cassandra Stays (red), and Amber in the Augusta Stays.

We’d hoped to have images of Amber in her beautifully finished View A Cassandra Stays, but every time she scheduled a photoshoot nature scheduled a blizzard!

You can see in the images how much longer the Cassandra Stays make the torso appear, how much higher they are in the back, and how much longer the tabs are, for more rounded flare. All of these help create the silhouette that was most fashionable between 1760 and 1780, while the sorter torso of the Augusta Stays is the fashionable look for 1775-1789. As always, there’s an overlap in fashion as ideals transition from one look to the next.