New project - 1760s Robe a la Francaise

I am beginning on a new project. I saw that the local dance group is having an 18th century ball in late March, and started researching gowns, and fell in love. I bought the new American Duchess book on Georgian gowns, and joined the 18th Century Sewing FB group. OMG all the pretties! 

I bought the Redthreaded Georgian stays pattern, and the AD Simplicity patterns for undergarments and the robe a la francaise.

I made the stays first. Stays have intimidated me since I began making corsets due to having to bind the tabs, and they proved to be difficult as I had imagined, and are not very pretty! 

I had bought some gorgeous limited edition Liberty of London silk/cotton voile back when I started corset making, and thought it would be perfect for stays. I fused it to coutil and used a cotton twill for the lining, and some faux suede for the binding. I can't get enough of this Liberty fabric, it's soooooo gorgeous!

Here are the boned stays in progress. I used flat steels along the center back and a spiral bone for the horizontal boning, and cheated and used zip ties everywhere else.

I also decided to be brave and tackle hand-sewn eyelets. My hand sewing is not the greatest so I was intimidated, but I watched some YouTube videos and did a practice one, and they actually turned out pretty good! I wish I had made them a touch bigger, but I knew I was using 1/4" linen tape for the lacing and it fits.