Well, for better or worse the silver stays of doom are finally done. They continued their inclination to bad luck through the last few steps. As I was working the eyelets they got sparkling apple juice splashed on them. Luckily it didn’t stain the linen, but liquid is very bad for kid leather, so I think I’m going to have to replace part of the binding at some point. And then, after all the fuss about loosing the shoulder straps and having to cut a new pair, once I got all the eyelets worked and was finally able to try the thing, on the shoulder straps just didn’t work very well. So all that perfect, painstaking hand stitching got unpicked, the back got cut down just a little and I now have strapless stays. Without the shoulder straps tying in pretty bows in front, the front has little visual interest, so I felt the need to lace it with fancy ribbon. Of course, this means I can only unlace it via the back, which means …