Show me a historical costumer who likes doing gussets and I’ll outright accuse them of lying: I woke this morning, with sense of purpose in relation to the stays. After a sustaining breakfast of porridge (what, I’m Scottish?), I set to purpose with my nemeses.
The first thing I did was ensure that my two layers were firmly basted to each other - around the top edges, the mid seam and also either in the middle of the gussets or around 5/8 to 1 inch from the fabric edges. Then I set to sandwiching the actual gussets between the layers. Trust me when I say this is NO FUN.
Side note: with this pattern I have a curving seam horizontally across the pattern. It does help it fit nicely and comes from the Daffodowndilly pattern, on which these are mostly based. If you use this kind of pattern or have a horizontal mid seam, for the love of chocolate, please make sure you trim down the seam allowance pointing up towards the gussets openings. If you don’t, you risk playing about with scissors trying to trim said seam allowance as it pokes up between the gussets. Another suggestion is to tack the triangle bit of the gusset seam to the upturned and pressed horizontal seam to each other (before basting each side of the stays together), so that when you start sandwiching in gussets, everything stays flat. Obviously, this occurred because my gusset slits have to be cut as low as they are, otherwise it wouldn’t have been an issue.
You have to make sure that the seam allowance (1/4 in) is the same on each of the main body edges AND the gussets. Too much and the gussets will be too small (and look wonky). With the fabric edges of the main body, get them wrong and you could end up not securing all layers with stitching. This will result in lots of tears, swearing and redoing. While pinning all this together, you have to go slowly, using lots of pins and essentially do this 3D if you’ve got curved edges to your gussets, to make sure that sandwich hem is approx 1/4 in all the way round. Thankfully, I left just enough space with the basting to be able to check this fairly well. But you have to both pin and think in 3D terms, which is quite difficult, while ensuring the seams are mostly the same, so it won’t wonk up when sewing. You also need to make sure all the edges are properly folded in, so you can’t see any raw edges.
Now an experienced sewer would tell you to do something entirely sensible at this point, which would be to take a different colour of basting thread, carefully baste all these layers together and then remove most, if not all, of your original SEAM basting (note: not the gussets piece basting, unless it’s hidden by the overlapping edges of the main body piece. I am not that sewer and I tend to get impatient. This is even knowing that by not doing that, I risk (and succeeded with) leaving little bits of visible tacking when I then go to remove the basting. I would also encourage everyone to please tack down the bottom triangle bit of the gussets with thread the same colour as your fabric, so that if you struggle to get it out later, it’s not really going to show.
Another side note: Sandwiching in the gussets invariably will not go well, resulting in lots of repeated pinning until the gussets are all in sort of the right place, matching at each side, if that makes any sense. If you don’t finagle them properly, you risk the cups being different sizes, hence the attention to detail required when matching all the seams. Also, if you cut your gussets correctly, you will have a bit of surplus fabric extending over the top of the main body part. This it totally fine and you can trim it down afterwards - just make sure that the excess matches on each side of the stays.
Anyway, at this point I decided I was absolutely not going to stress myself out hand-sewing the gussets in place, as originally planned, mainly because it would lead to even more swearing, tears, blood everywhere and so on (any hand sewing on a project and there’s a lot of spitting - as the enzyme in your spit breaks down blood, reducing permanent staining. Top tip). So, off to the sewing machine I went.
For the most part, this has gone fairly well, with most of the seams being pretty good. I had to rip out the start of one, when the underside layer decided to wrinkle up and also discovered the same once I was done (but I hand-sewed the correction to that, with blood, swearing and tears). I then overcast the bottoms of the gussets (poorly) and set to pulling out the basting stitches. It’s at this point I have regrets over the colour of the basting thread, but I reassure myself that nobody is going to see them unless I want them to and it will all probably come out with time or a magnifying glass, patience and a set of tweezers. Another tip of mine here is to consider sewing each side of each gusset from top to bottom, rather than trying to constantly turn the fabric. This saves time, promotes accuracy and then you probably should do a few rows of reinforcing stitching across the bottom of each gusset.
Note: I was correct in that I still absolutely hate hand sewing through multiple layers of fabric, trying to keep seams together.
So - thoughts: Would it have been simpler to stitch in single gusset layers to each side then sandwich together with the boning channels and at the sides of the gussets? Probably, but doing it in one halved the time I spent and I managed to do OK, with minimal correcting. I would definitely say that it is easier to treat each fabric layer individually, but my previous experience has resulted in a degree of wonkiness when then matching up the gussets and stitching those layers together. That said, that stitching is only ever two layers of fabric.
Award to my sewing machine for taking 6 layers of some random drill fabric and stitching it all together.
I have now pinned the side backs to one layer of the thing and while I am tempted to keep on at this today, I also know that I shouldn’t do these kinds of tasks for more than a couple of hours at a time. Plus, I need to eat my lunch, which I forgot as long Covid left me without appetite stimulus.
I am still stuck on what to do about the straps, but I think I have the idea of how to do it in my head and in regards to attaching them and the twill.
The next part of this will be stitching on each side back and then marking (and sewing) all the boning channels. I checked the back seam ones and realised that the ones I bought are a tiny bit too long, so I’ve just bought four, slightly smaller ones and am now waiting for them. Unfortunately, the seller is on annual leave this week so I won’t have them sent out till next Friday, but as I still need to do quite a bit of work on the rest, I’m not overly concerned about this, as I’ve lots more I can work on. The bones are also not wasted: I’m sure I can use them for another project (I might even be able to use them on this one, but that depends on overall comfort and placing).
Have a great week, everyone. Here are some photos, posted, by chance of the internet gods, in no particular order. I tried, honest.
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