(soft music) - One of the most defining features of the turn-of-the-century
silhouette is this. You've seen them. Swan-like ladies of impossible
shapes and proportions, but that was ye olden days, right? Obviously human bodies were
shaped differently, right? Um, no. Let me tell you a thing. Historical humans, Edwardians included, were masters of disguise and
supremely skilled at underwear, particularly undergarments
that had the ability to completely and seamlessly
influence the outer shape. I have long wanted to try my hand at one of these bust bodices, because as we've learned with last year's 1890s corset project, the reduction aspect of a corset in achieving a 19th or
early-20th-century silhouette only works when the body is full enough in the
right places to begin with. Some people actually require
a bit more help building out than taking in, a perhaps less-than-frequently
discussed trick of historical silhouette, but just as important as
the more prevalent concept of corsetry, nonetheless. Fortunately, there happened
to be a wonderful example of a surviving bust bodice
in the Symington collection, which Cathy and I had the
pleasure to go and study back in January. (gentle music) I'm starting off with
a mock-up, of course, just to be sure that the pattern pieces all go nicely together, but since one of the most
significant shaping factors of this garment are the
horizontal stiffening rails, I'm going to tackle those first. Prepare ye for some serious nerd hype, because this research hole was riveting. So basically, when we were
examining the original garment, one of the horizontal
channels had worn through to reveal several small strips
of bound feather quills, which the object description
provided by the collection informed us were goose quills. This, ladies and gentlefolk, is an actual, real-life application of
the patented featherbone, which makes my little nerd heart sing, because how often are we literally handed primary detailed information
on exactly what a thing is and how to do it? Well, quite often, in the
Victorian and Edwardian periods, because those people really liked to flex their swanky new systems and inventions, which is why it's particular
fun to work in this period. But anyway, featherbone
was patented in 1883 by Edward Warren of the
Warren Featherbone Company in response to the diminishing supply and thus increased cost of whalebone, and he utilized stripped quills of turkey, goose, or chicken feathers, which, quote, "Heretofore had little "or no commercial value." Warren's patent describes the process by which this featherbone is made. Quote, "Splitting or otherwise reducing, "either by hand or machinery,
but preferably by machinery, "the quills into splints. "These splints or bers
may be held together "by any suitable external binding, "thus, I wrap them with
either wire or thread "by winding, braiding, twisting, "or they may be cemented or
be otherwise put up together "to form a featherbone
of any desired shape "in its transverse section." The featherbone, present
on the Symington bodice, was in all likelihood
manufactured by machine. In fact, the entire bust
bodice is machine-stitched, so this is definitely
a mass-manufacture item with very little handcraft in it, but obviously, as I don't
have the appropriate featherbone-manufacturing machinery, whatever that actually is, I bound my boning by
hand, using linen thread, and as I would need three
23-inch-long lengths, I decided to bind one continuous
two-and-a-half-yard strip that I could then cut down to size, just like regular modern strip boning. This is achieved by
intermittently slotting new strips of split quill, as I continue
binding everything together, so that I end up with one
long, even strip of quill bone. This two-and-a-half yards, it turns out, required more than the
dozen feathers I bought. Luckily, I have a handy
stash of goose feathers, which have not yet been
cut into quill pens, so another half-dozen did the trick. The boning that I examined on the original also did seem to be glued
or cemented, I guess, after binding, presumably for strength, or perhaps to better
hold the curved shape. So I coated my finished
strip of bone liberally. As we didn't have the
ability to chemically test precisely what this glue was made from, I'm using rabbit-skin glue here. Definitely accurate up
through the 18th century and available during the 19th century. Whether or not this would
have been the substance of post-industrial choice? Questionable. All right, so here is where we are in bust bodice land so far. I mean, the pattern pieces have gone together quite wonderfully. It doesn't have this thick busk in it yet, so there was a little bit of question here because Cathy didn't
quite have time to get to the full back panel. This was part my interpretation of her trying to text me instructions of how she remembered
how it went together, so this probably is not correct. There does seem to be a little
bit too much width here, and I had a look at the
original bust bodice. There is a little bit of
gaping on the original, just where the length of the bust bodice is a bit longer than the
torso of the mannequin. I mean, my torso is
likewise not this long, so I will have to probably
take some width out of this, but the original panel
does seem to slope up just a little bit more, instead of coming out
more here and then up. So this is something I will
have to correct on the pattern. By the way, I've just sort
of pinned these rails. I'm calling them rails,
just because that's what these horizontal bones were
called on 18th-century stays. Definitely no evidence
that this is correct, actual historically-used
terminology for this bust bodice, but that's what I'm
going to call it for now. Terminology is a very slippery,
nasty, dangerous slope. The actual bust bodice
has a lot more curve. I did initially put this on the mannequin and I was like, "Oh my
god, this is all wrong. "It doesn't come up this high. "Why is this gaping?" But then I realized that I
did not pre-shape the bones for this mock-up. On the actual bust bodice,
it does curve out a lot more, like this, which puts the top of it in a much better position and also helps the top of it
sit flatter against the chest. Because these are flat steel bones, they can be bent into shape, and that's what I will be
doing before I put these into the boning channels
on the actual thing. So that's where we are
so far, just mock-up-ing. It seems to be working fine. I'm ready now to get started on the bobbinet version of this. By the way, excuse this
absolutely hideous stitching, but you know what? Machines are not my jam. So before we can get started
on cutting out the bobbinet, we first have to put some starch into this because the original bust
bodice is very, very stiff. I have here some potato starch. I mean, in the Victorian period, they probably would have had
actual purpose laundry starch, but I couldn't find any
in the grocery store that wasn't spray bottle starch that includes chemicals
and silicone and stuff, so I decided I'm going
to go the natural route. I have some water boiling over there, getting ready to help
us with this endeavor, and I also have my notes on starching, from when I actually learned
how to do this in 2018. I've since forgotten how to do this, but are going to see if we can re-remind ourselves how this works. It is a very delicate balance,
all of this starching stuff. There is some serious chemistry, I guess, that has to go on because, in order for the starch to
get to the right consistency, it has to have the right
timings and amounts of cold water to hot water, so we're going to some experimenting and see if we can get
things to behave today. Cesario thinks he's getting some food, but alas, not right, sir. So my feeble attempts at starch-making were not nearly so successful
as Constance Mackenzie's, who has just conveniently
put up an entire, extremely detailed
walk-through of how to make up Victorian-approvable laundering starch in a way that does not
involve it congealing mostly into jelly, as I have done here. So I shall link that down below for the deeply curious to
go and have a ponder at for actually useful instruction. I also realized, after
the starching thatched, that I literally do not
have a warm, dry place for drying starched items. Constance is an actual Edwardian, so she has an aga for this purpose, but I have neither an
equally-suitable radiator nor sunny outdoor space to hang this, so I resorted to stretching
it out on the piggy gate, within the path of the very
21st-century HVAC flow, which seemed to, well,
it did dry, eventually. The next day, I had a very stiff and very misshapen length of bobbinet, which I sorted out by pressing it back into a respectable shape. (gentle piano music) And, at long last, we're finally ready to actually cut the pieces out. This bust bodice is
made up of four pieces, a small center front strip and three curved panels on either side. It doesn't reach all the
way to close in the back. It only ties shut, so this
should be fairly accommodating to a lot of sizes, and aside from the length
adjustment on the back panel, I didn't need to make any
fit changes on the mock-up. The purpose of this garment, after all, is to create shape, not to
conform to the shape that I have. Anyway, the pieces are all pinned together pretty straightforwardly. By the way, for those of you who watched the fabric shopping blog and got to hear my color-matching woes, I ended up bleaching the
bobbinet to this nice white, so all turned out well in the end. (cheerful music) So everything is pinned together, except then I remember
that the center front strip is actually backed with
a layer of fine cotton, and features another
double layer of fine cotton a little bit ways down the strip to form a pocket for the busk. There are also 12 vertical boning channels from this same cotton, as well as three horizontal boning strips, and 50 inches of binding. Basically, there are a lot of little cotton piece I still need, so I paused the pinning for a
moment to cut all of this out. For the quarter-inch binding, I'm cutting out half-inch
strips on the bias, which is rather unusual
for historical binding. Often it's cut on the straight, but this garment is either late enough that people have stopped caring about the amount of fabric wastage
involved in bias cutting, or the mass manufacturer of these bodices allowed for bias strips to be cut in bulk with minimal wastage. I'm also cutting one-inch
strips plus seam allowance for the center front panel backing, and net one inch strips to form the quarter-inch boning channels. Before I proceed with
putting the things together, I'm first just pressing quarter-inch folds along the 12 boning channel strips so that my clean-edged
quarter-inch channels are ready to go. I'm also doing this on the three
larger horizontal channels. (gentle music) First and foremost, I'm
pinning the cotton backing to the narrow center-front
strip of the net, since this is the only
panel that's backed. I also pinned the doubled
pocket layer on here, but realized that those actually need to not be put on right now,
for logistical reasons you shall soon discover, so maybe just ignore that a little. Then I proceeded to pin
together the rest of the pieces. (gentle music) If you're popping in
here for the first time, this is my pretty little machine friend, a hand-turned Singer machine made in 1891 that I shall be doing
all of the construction for this project on. Literally everything on
the original bust bodice is machine stitched, originally, like with specialty industrial state-of-the-art Edwardian machinery, not my little domestic friend here, but it's the closest thing I can get to reproducing the original
construction methods. (cheerful music) (antique sewing machine ASMR) The seams are then pressed flat. These seam allowances are trimmed
down to 3/16ths of an inch which, for you metric people, I apologize. Basically, it is just one hair
under a quarter of an inch, so that they fit under the
quarter-inch boning channels without poking out at all. Then, using the marks on the patterns, I'm marking where the ends
of the horizontal channels need to start and stop, so that I have some guidelines of where to pin those channels. But before I can put in the channels, I'm first just pressing the featherbone. If you've never worked
with feathers before, basically, they're really
sculptable when heated and softened, then cooled into shape. So I'm using a bit of intuition here, steaming the quills heavily with an iron, and then molding them into
a distinct curved shape so that they'll harden
into a specific curve The featherbone in the
original bust bodice was extremely hardened
into the curved shape and physically would not bend outwards, unlike my featherbone here,
which is currently content to lay completely flat
if I put it that way, so it seems to me that a
bit of steaming and shaping is necessary to achieve that strong curve. So here is where we are so far. I have gone ahead and I have marked where the three horizontal channels
for the rails will go on this. Of course, I re-read my
construction order notes and realized that the busk pocket bit that I had put onto the busk thing and stitched all in one, is not what I'm supposed to do because these rails will run through that and then the stitching will be here, and you won't be able to get the busk in. So I did have to rip out this panel, take off this busk pocket and then re-stitch this panel down so that I can get the
rail channels on here, and then stitch this on, so that it actually functions,
which will be very nice. Meanwhile, I have the rails. I've just sort of shaped them like that, and I'm going to leave
them there overnight so that maybe they have a little bit nicer of a curved shape. Feathers, when they are
steamed and put into shape, do tend to hold that shape really well, hence why the bust bodice that we studied at the Symington collection was still very, very rigidly like this and did not, absolutely,
under no circumstances want to lie flat. Meanwhile, I'm going to go ahead and start getting these channels in. I think what I'm going to have to do is, because these are not
going to be a good time to thread through boning
channels once they are complete, just because they're very rough and they're not going to slide easily, so I think what I'm going to have to do is stitch down the top of each channel and then go through with a cording foot, which I actually now have, thank you to the wonderful
people who have sent me all sorts of fun little accessories and bits and bobs and
supplies for this lovely lady. I think I have something
now that will work. So going with what's
basically a zipper foot, but what historically would
be called a cording foot, just stitches right on the very edge and put the featherbone under
the channel, pin that down, and just stitch along that line. This sounds extremely tedious. I am not looking forward to this. There is every possibility
that I will just NOPE right out of this situation and hand-sew the bottom
half of the channel. (gentle music) So as briefly explained, I'm only stitching down the
top edge of each channel, leaving the bottom one free
to add the featherbone in before closing the channels. (sewing machine clicking) This is going to require a
bit of tedious explaining, but since featherbone is very dimensional, as in it's not flat like steel or baleen, that width has to sit somewhere. On the original bodice, the
inside with the cotton channels lays perfectly flat, while the net layer on
the outside was the layer that curved outwardly over the
roundness of the featherbone, if that makes sense. So I'm pinning deliberately here so that the featherbone
pushes the net layer outward while allowing the boning channel to lay flat on the inside, which I actually found easier to do with the outside facing me, pinning the channels sort
of blindly underneath, but ensuring that the ridges
created in the net layer looked taught and even. This was extremely tedious
to do and took ages. I am near certainly positive that this was not how this
was done historically, since this is definitely not a task conducive to profitable
mass-manufacturing. Sure, the channels on the original still weren't perfectly
straight and even in spacing, but I began to think that there
was some sort of machinery involved in this task, because it was not a fun one. (soft piano music) Before I could start stitching this bit, I first changed out the foot so that I could get as close up to the edge of the
featherbone as possible. And from this point onward,
I found it easier to sew over the corner of my cutting table, to allow the bodice to
curve off into oblivion rather than forcing the bones flat. Feather quills, once set and
hardened into a curved shape are more prone to snapping
if handled too abrasively, so as much as possible, I wanted to avoid bending it unnaturally. Again, not sure how they would have handled this historically, as I'm not sure there were
this many corner table options available in the production factory, but perhaps this method of
stitching wasn't even necessary with whatever witchcraft was used for industrially adding featherbone to extremely-shaped garments. Once the horizontal bones
are all stitched in, I can then place the vertical channels that will hold the steels. There are 12 of these in
total, one over each raw seam, as well as two in the middle
of the side front panel and one in the middle of the side back. (gentle piano music) (time to get slightly mesmerized
by watching the workings of a Victorian machine) Okay, so I got about
yea far, as in this far, but then, I very suddenly remembered that there's supposed to be this busk pocket, and if I sew down the boning channels, it's not going to make much sense to then stitch the busk
pocket over top of the bone, so what I will not do is stitch down this side of the boning channel. I will pause for a second on this. I'm going to just stitch down
this extra little busk pocket just at the edges here, where it's supposed to be stitched down, and then I will go ahead and resume stitching the boning
channels over top of this. That way, I can get my busk in without disturbing boning channels, disturbing busks, disturbing goose quills. This is all a very complex
step-by-step process, but I think we are figuring things out. I hope we're doing this correctly. (more sewing machine ASMR) (gentle piano music) (lively piano music) Then I can add the bones. The original bodice has two lengths of flat steel bones per channel, one bone that reaches all
the way from top to bottom, and a second that starts from the bottom but stops just at the horizontal row. These are pre-shaped
with some light bending before being inserted into the channels, and I'm lining up each bone to mark where it meets the horizontal rows so that I know where to bend, since that is the broadest part
of the curve on the bodice. (lively piano music) Okay, so bones are in. I'm actually really quite
pleased with this shape. The only thing is, friends, there is
something grievously wrong with this back panel, and this was obviously something
that I was suspicious of, that Cathy and I were both suspicious of, because we know she didn't have time to take an accurate
pattern of this back panel. I thought that once
the stiffening went in, that it would sort itself out. It has only gotten worse. Okay, so Cathy is a very
cunning little witchling, and what she did is she, because the original bust
bodice has a very distinct and geometrical, rectangular
weave pattern to the net, she took that weave pattern
while she was there, because she knew she
wasn't going to have time to get the entire pattern, mocked it up in Excel, printed
that off as grid paper, and she actually went back to the Symington collection today, re-took a pattern of
the entire bust bodice. The back panel shape literally
looks entirely different. It's not concave like this. It's actually convex, like
the rest of the panels, to get that nice, outward curve like that. She has sent me a preliminary picture of what this new pattern shape looks like. I'm hoping she's going
to be able to scan it and send it to me once
she gets home tonight. So what I want do is I think I'm just gonna
rip off this back panel, undo this boning channel, undo
these little bits of rails, which is really annoying, because these were such
a pain to stitch down. I do, thankfully, still have a bit of the starched bobbinet left over that I can hopefully get two
more back panels cut out of and then just re-attach the
correct shape of back panel so that hopefully it won't be doing this. So I'm not going to film this, because this is just annoying. Well, friends, that'll do it. This is the old piece, as you
may or may not be able to see. This is the new piece. As you can see, the shape
is vastly different, and my instinct was actually correct. See, this was the piece that
I cut off the bottom here. It does actually slope up
quite a bit on this new piece. So I actually very nearly
got this on my own, but this, of course, is what was causing all of that wonkiness up there. I'm very thrilled about this. I'm going to go ahead and cut
out new shapes out of this, get those attached to the bust bodice, and then we shall resume
where we left off. That did indeed happen, and I have graciously not subjected you to the mess and screaming involved in re-stitching the featherbone channels with all three bones already in position, because it was a certifiable march to the deepest bowels of hell, but we are now merrily
pressing our one-inch binding with the quarter-inch edges turned under, then pressing those in half
to form half-inch binding. This is then pinned to the edge of the bust bodice all around. (lively music) At the top edge, however,
all across the side back, front, and center front panels, is a length of cotton tape that is trapped inside the binding and is anchored at the
end of the side back panel to escape through a finished
split in the binding at center front to function as the drawstring. This is a common feature
of historical corsetry, allowing the upper edge to
be drawn in ever so slightly so that it fits closely to the
body and doesn't gape away. The binding is then
stitched on by machine, the front and back caught in one go, which is a feat that perpetually leaves me in awe and astonishment, as it is not a skill I have ever proven myself capable
of actually achieving. In fact, machine binding is
a particular nemesis of mine, and after missing a few lengths of binding on the underside as I went 'round, was very, VERY tempted to just fell down the back side
by hand, as would be sensible. Pulled myself together and
managed it passably by machine. Barely. Finally, well, not
finally, but yes finally, a length of cotton lace is added
across the top for funsies, and I have replaced the
synthetic insertion ribbon with a silk one, of course,
like that on the original. Friends, she is nearly complete. I say nearly, however,
because there is one more tiny little snag that we've hit. See, because in my infinite wisdom, when I purchased these metal eyelets, which are rather admittedly
a foreign body to me to begin with, I purchased the eyelets
that do not come with the washers that go on
the back of the eyelets, so I cannot actually set
these into the bust bodice until I have said washers. However, upon filming this video, we are currently on day
three of quarantine lockdown for ye olde plague that is happening, and as of this morning, all non-essential New York City
businesses have been closed. So I actually cannot obtain said washers. I am about to go panic-search and see if I can find something
of this colorway and size on Amazon, perhaps. Maybe I will be able to get something that will work on there? I have no idea. Hopefully Amazon will
even still be delivering in the next couple of days. We don't know, so I'm going to
go investigate that situation and if I am successful,
you shall see footage of me happily setting
in these metal eyelets, which shall happen several days from now. I did, in fact, find
eyelets on the Internets, but as of recording this
voiceover a literal month later, they still have yet to arrive, and so I must unfortunately explain to you the theory of these eyelets, two of which are meant to
go at the center front, at the base of the busk, and two of which are meant to
go on either side of the back just between the horizontal
bones, for lacing purposes. I decided to just hold out and
wait until non-plague times to address this situation, instead of hand-sewing them in for the sake of video deadlines, since I know, in the long run, I will be much happier
with a garment that is as close to the original as possible, and this bust bodice doesn't
actually need to be worn until May of 2021 now anyway. So here's the bust bodice
in mostly-finished glory. Oh, and that busk at the center front. The original is a thin,
7/8ths of an inch flat steel, at seven inches long, which unfortunately, is
not manufactured today- because apparently modern corset-makers aren't reproducing bust
bodices or something?- but I did manage to find a
six-inch steel ruler on Amazon that suited this brilliantly, so that is what I have used for that. But how does this function in silhouette? With a bit of creative rigging, I did manage to give it a test wear in spite of the lack of upper eyelets, and found that it does indeed do wonders towards recreating that classic
early Edwardian silhouette by building out that essential
pigeon-fronted effect and, in turn, along with some
corresponding hip padding, making the waist appear tiny. Although bust improvers
of all shapes and designs were worn by all sizes of women, the advertisement that
initially inspired this project marketed a garment similar
to this to "slender women" as an aid to improve a lacking bust shape. Ahem, me. And claimed that it could be
worn with or without a corset, and I can understand why. My natural waist doesn't
require any reduction in order to achieve the
standard Edwardian proportions. That is, the bust being approximately 10 inches larger than the waist, and the hips approximately
15 inches larger. This also fortuitously
means that I now have, one year later, finally successfully
solved my scoliosis problem in re-creating a
convincing Edwardian shape with no pressure on my spine. Winning all around! So as you may or may not know, this bust bodice marks the second part in a multi-process series
of my endeavor to recreate a Worth-inspired 1890s ballgown, a project which has most
kindly sponsored by Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of creative and business-oriented online courses to help you learn new skills
and develop existing skills, or just generally explore your creativity. Whilst on lockdown, I have
had a bit of extra time to take some new courses myself, including this course by Greg McKeown on Simple Productivity, because goodness knows I definitely needed some essential strategies
for maintaining productivity, amongst this very strange situation, and the strategies I've learned are ones I can develop to use even when life does return to normal. Skillshare is giving away two free months of premium membership
to the first 1000 people who click the link in the
description box below, to help you explore your creativity. After that, it is only around $10 a month. Anyway, before we move
on to the actual gown, we still have a bit more
underwear to tackle, so while I get to work on that, I shall wish you a merry
rest of whatever hours remain on the clock within your
respective geographical location, and I shall see you anon with some more historical
sewing adventures. (cheerful music) (Pig reel!!)
I went into her channel looking for ASMR but stayed subscribed because her content is interesting as hell. Also yeah, I love her looks and voice.