All posts tagged: stays

Baroque & Rococo Out-takes

Last week I was privileged enough to do a photoshoot with Mandi of A La Mode Photography for Radio New Zealand. The photoshoot will be featured on the Radio NZ website to coincide with a programme developed by Clarissa Dunn, who collaborated with me on the Grandeur to Frivolity talk. The day was just fantastic – three gorgeous models, and Clarissa as an (also gorgeous) advisor and model all in my 17th and 18th century outfits, hair and makeup fully done. Mandi took a whole series of formal studio portraits while I madly ironed and laced and did hair while all the models who weren’t in front of the camera helped. She’s posted a sneak-peek of the shoot on her website, and now I’m even more excited about seeing the rest, if that is possible! After the formal studio shots it was time for fun. We ventured out into the streets of Petone, and I captured a series of very un-serious and un-historical, but totally fabulous, images of the models blending modern life and historical …

Finished project: the very dreadful silver stays

Published by The Dreamstress

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 …

These are the stays that never end

Published by The Dreamstress

I’m still working on my ill-begotten silver stays. They are not moving very fast, partly because I haven’t had a lot of free time, but mostly because they are cursed. Every time I take them somewhere intending to work on them I find I have missed something important: the kid leather binding, my awl for doing the lacing holes, the thread for the lacing holes, the thread for the binding, my snips, a needle, or (in the case of my Australia trip) HALF of the stays! Here is where they stays are now: Since the last post I sewed down all of the gilded linen outer covering fabric: I also worked all of the front eyelets, binding them in blue thread for a bit of contrast, and to match the lining: The lining is completely done, but I still need to work all of the back eyelets: I’m binding all the edges in white kid leather cut from damaged vintage gloves: The binding isn’t completely accurate – it has both raw edges showing, and most …