Making 17th Century Stays: Historical Corsetry with a Cheesy Secret!

In this video, I walk you step by step how to make a pair of 17th century stays based on an extant garment dated from the years 1640-1660. Using historically adequate materials and techniques, I hand-dyed these stays to fit a working class impression. These stays are lightweight, comfortable, and surprisingly flexible, considering there’s a wooden pain stick buried in the center front. Oh yeah—and I’ve hidden a bunch of pizzas somewhere on the project. Is anyone surprised? 😁 Stays are the older sibling to the 19th century corset. For the majority of the 17th century, stays (or bodies) were heavily decorated and worn as outer garments instead of underneath a bodice, like they were in the 18th century. The significant feature of this time period is a very long front line, although not as long and rigid as earlier time periods (think Elizabethan.) I’m so excited to share the making of these stays with everyone! I’ve been planning them for more than a year. There aren’t a ton of extant garments from this time period and very little instruction that’s free and readily available, and so nobody really does the 17th century. In this video, I try and take the time to show you all the steps, as well as some of the problems and triumphs I came across during the making of these stays. All while being my usual goofy self, of course. If you missed the mockup process for these stays, you can check out that separate video here: https://youtu.be/so5zwyYqUIE Resources: Patterns of Fashio