Regency Short Stays

The second garment I made for my Regency costume collection for the Jane Austen Festival, after the simple chemise, was a set of short stays. Short stays were the corsets of the time period - they were unique in that they were much less boned and constricting than those that came immediately before or after.

I used a pattern made by RedThreaded but adjusted the gores for a better fit on my body. I started with a single layer toile to understand the basic construction and then made the final piece in cotton coutil flatlined to a linen/cotton blend fabric. While grommets would not have been used at that time in history, I decided to use them for the strength and longevity of the garment. Garments of this era would have had hand-sewn eyelets for the lacing so I did carefully cover up each grommet to look like it was sewn and not metal. This had the added bonus of covering any rough edges of the grommets allowing the lacing to glide through without getting caught.

Most of the construction is done with machine sewing but places that were too thick for a machine to do were done by hand.