The 1790s was a transitional period, going from the 18th century conical shape to the softer rounder and hish waisted regency fashion. With all this change in siluettte came also changes to the under garments, my 1780s stays would give a too conical shape and my regency stays too much roundesss and separation for this specific siluette from about 1795 to 1799 though I could also wear these stays with my early 90s chemise gown (more on that coming later once I’ve gotten pictures of it). This period was so experimental that all the extants I’ve looked at are vastly different from each other in shape, amount of boning and even in the siluette they give. Looking though the differnt options I decided to make the 1790s linen corset from Corsets by Jill Salen. The reasons why I chose this pattern was that it looked fairly simple, was not one of the super short ones that I find uncomfortable and it just so happened that the original owner of these and I were pretty much exactly the same size other than me having a much larger chest. I just chaled the pattern up and made the bust dart bigger and went right onto sewing.
I used a fairly thick handwoven linen twill repurposed from a vintage towel and the boning is 5mm synthetic whalebone at the back and sides and heavy duty zip ties at the bust. I love the fact that this is front lacing so I can put it on myself, it just makes life so much easyer when that pesky maidservant is nowhere to be found. 😉
The only real changes I made to the original besides making the bust gore bigger was lengthening the straps and swithich the lacing to the front because I just had no idea what was going on with the originals there. I also left the other pair of boning fron the center back pieces off because it just seemed unnecessary.
Sew through time 