kristen jones
Master Member
Hey all!
Some of you may know that I'm a leather worker, and also an aficionado of 18th century clothing.
A while back, i decided to undertake crafting myself a set of stays (an early concept of a corset) to possibly replace the fabric pair I had made several years ago. Here's a look at what those fabric stays look like:
Taking the pattern from these stays, i decided to try building a set from leather:
Once they were traced on the back of this veg tanned hide, I cut them out and began hand stitching them together at the seams. Once I'd assembled the front and side front panels, i decided to try my hand at some decorative tooling:
I finished stitching and tooling, and then decided to have a try on:
With this step finished I was pretty happy with the preliminary fit. It was time to dye the stays, and weather them... as I'd decided that i wanted these to be worn on the outside of my garments--instead of underneath--as is traditional. I thought they were just too pretty to cover up. So after some dye and dirtying, they looked like this:
Satisfied with their finish, I decided to try and evolve the concept of what i would wear underneath. I started with this arrangement (it should be noted that I'm wearing a prototype version of the leather stays in these photos... that's why the tooling and fit is different)
I like the maroon shift, and the tiered silk underskirt isn't *bad*, but I wanted something a bit more eclectic. Since the stays needed to be broken in anyway, I decided to wet them down, lace them on and wear them to work today, so that they could be formed to my body. During that process, I came up with the idea for this version of the whole outfit (NOTE: I didn't wear the sword to work!
)
Imgur is now giving me an error and I can't upload the other two views right now, but what do you all think of this vibe? I'm still planning on evolving it going forward, but would like some feedback.
Some of you may know that I'm a leather worker, and also an aficionado of 18th century clothing.
A while back, i decided to undertake crafting myself a set of stays (an early concept of a corset) to possibly replace the fabric pair I had made several years ago. Here's a look at what those fabric stays look like:
Taking the pattern from these stays, i decided to try building a set from leather:
Once they were traced on the back of this veg tanned hide, I cut them out and began hand stitching them together at the seams. Once I'd assembled the front and side front panels, i decided to try my hand at some decorative tooling:
I finished stitching and tooling, and then decided to have a try on:
With this step finished I was pretty happy with the preliminary fit. It was time to dye the stays, and weather them... as I'd decided that i wanted these to be worn on the outside of my garments--instead of underneath--as is traditional. I thought they were just too pretty to cover up. So after some dye and dirtying, they looked like this:
Satisfied with their finish, I decided to try and evolve the concept of what i would wear underneath. I started with this arrangement (it should be noted that I'm wearing a prototype version of the leather stays in these photos... that's why the tooling and fit is different)
I like the maroon shift, and the tiered silk underskirt isn't *bad*, but I wanted something a bit more eclectic. Since the stays needed to be broken in anyway, I decided to wet them down, lace them on and wear them to work today, so that they could be formed to my body. During that process, I came up with the idea for this version of the whole outfit (NOTE: I didn't wear the sword to work!
)Imgur is now giving me an error and I can't upload the other two views right now, but what do you all think of this vibe? I'm still planning on evolving it going forward, but would like some feedback.
