Making a wedding dress part 6 - stays

It's been a while since my last making a wedding dress post. Today I'm going to talk a bit about the internal construction of the dress.

Wedding dresses are very heavy, and often are strapless or have delicate straps or sleeves. Because of the weight of the dress, you don't want the dress dangling from the shoulders even if the straps or shoulder parts are sturdy. Instead, a wedding dress is built up from the waist out.

If you think of a woman's torso, the waist is the narrowest part. A belt or band that is tight on the waist isn't going to move up or down. That is what a waist stay is. It's a snug belt of grosgrain ribbon that fastens at the waist. The bodice of the dress is anchored to the waist stay so it isn't going to ride up or fall down. The grosgrain is hand sewn to the inside of the corset where the bones are (so there is no risk of the stitches showing through on the right side).

Here is a picture of the inside of the corset that formed the foundation of the dress

From 2010-05-04

I'm not going to go into detail about corset making, because I don't think this was a very good example! It was designed to be as light and non-bulky as possible, and wasn't designed to reduce the waist at all (the hooks and eyes wouldn't have taken any strain) - the corset was to shape the dress, not the wearer.

You can see the waist and bust stays. The waist stay is the wide bit of grosgrain at the botton, the bust stay is silk covered elastic.
The bust stay does a similar job to the waist stay, it anchors the dress at the bust. The bust stay is attaches to the dress by thread loops at centre front at the bust line, just under each breast, and then in a straight line round the back (remember we have a side opening). The bust stay is elastic because if it were grosgrain and anchored to the dress as the waist stay is, the wearer would have very limited movement.

Here is a close up of the fastening end of the wais stay - as you can see the grosgrain is folded back on itself to cushion the wearer from the hooks and eyes.

From 2010-05-04

You can see the steel spiral boning through the thin lining - I would normally line a corset with another layer of coutil, but as this was only going to be worn once and we wanted to keep bulk to a minimum I used silk habotai

Here is the hook end

From 2010-05-04

After fitting, it was necessary to tighten and raise the bust stay slightly. The dress was still a bit loose above the bust, so I added a further length of elastic at the top of the corset to hold it snug to the bust but still allow movement.

Bust and waist stays are rarely used in home dressmaking, but can be a useful tool. A bust stay can stop a garment gaping at centre front, and a waist stay along with boning can hold up strapless or heavy styles.