My name’s Claire, and I have a fabric problem.

 

Today I took on four new corset orders, to be completed during August. In order that people could choose the fabric that they wanted, I decided to organise a gallery.

All of the fabrics shown below are part of my very own fabric stash, which I’ve been collecting since approximately 2004. This is only a small selection, you can see the rest over at Flickr.

I’m not quite certain what I thought I was going to do with all of these fabrics.

Well, okay, I knew I was going to sew them one day, and I have been procrastinating like mad with regard to making corsets for exactly as long as I’ve been collecting the fabrics with which to make them.

I don’t know how I thought anybody was going to ask me to make a corset from any of these amazing fabrics when they were all tucked away carefully in my Shed, in an enormous box.

What I’m planning to do from now on is to offer a limited number or corsets for sale each month, made from the fabrics in my collection.

I’ll make a page for all the details later, but if you like the look of any of the fabrics, please feel free to claim it, and join the queue!

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Ta-Da! (Wearing the Fish Almost-Corset)

Ta-Da!
Please excuse my silly grin.

Here are a bunch of photos of my corset mock-up from the pattern that I drafted last week.

Looks pretty good from the front – nice and flat, which I am not! I should have posted a “without” photo, so you could see how much difference this is actually making to my shape. I realise it doesn’t look like much!

The back – almost completely laced up.
This is because I made a classic newbie drafting error, and whilst I took out a 2″ reduction for my waist, I forgot to take out an extra 2″ to allow for a gap at the back. That’s an amendment I need to make to the pattern straight away!

Side views – as you can see, there’s a bit of wrinkling around the waist at the back. I’ve posted this to the Livejournal Corsetmakers community, so hopefully I’ll be able to get some advice on getting rid of the wrinkles.

I think that’s pretty damn good for a first attempt though!

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I appear to have (mostly) made a corset.

I spent all morning faffing around with my printer, trying to put together some packaging for my badges, and sadly failed miserably. As a result, I decided to spend the afternoon doing something a little more productive.

So, I made a corset.

This is the first mock-up from the pattern I drafted the other day:

It’s made from three layers – cotton fashion fabric, a heavy drill for strength, and the lining is some lightweight black poly/cotton I had lying around. The waist tape is enclosed between the layers and is made from grosgrain ribbon, and the binding’s black poly/cotton.

The bones are Rigilene (two on each seam, plus front and back), and the front fastening is hook and eye tape. I’m waiting for my steel bones and busk to arrive, and I had these on hand, so I thought they’d be okay to just test the pattern.

I know it doesn’t look very shapely, but that’s because I’m not a very curvy shape! I wanted my first draft to fit my body shape pretty closely (this gives a two-inch reduction at the waist) before I started messing around with different proportions.

Sadly I can’t try it on just yet, because the last thing I need to do is add the grommets!

As you can see, I didn’t bother too much about pattern-matching on this one, as I was just using up a small remnant of fabric. The binding’s also done on the sewing machine rather than by hand, just for speed.

I think it looks okay for a first attempt though – although it remains to be seen how it behaves once I put it on.

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Learning to make corsets.

A long time ago (April 2006), I made a corset.

It didn’t fit me, but it did fit Ceri:

As it happens I never got around to making another one, and I eventually sold the pattern, forgetting that I still had all the boning for it! (I used plastic boning and hook & eye tape for Ceri’s corset, as it was only supposed to be a mock-up.)

However, because I’m such an odd shape, and have such a lot of random and varied pains in my abdominal area, I decided that it was simply too much hassle to try and re-draft a commercial corset pattern to fit my shape. Instead I’ve spent today with a tape measure and a t-square, working out how to draft a corset pattern for myself.

I haven’t looked at any historical books for inspiration, I’m not going for any kind of period-correct shape. All I want to do is make a little underbust corset, which fits my short waist and general proportions.

So far I’ve measured myself in all sorts of places. This enabled me to draw out a sloper based on my own measurements.

Then I worked out how much negative ease I needed in order to create a pretty shape, but also to (hopefully) remain comfortable. Once the new shape was drawn in, I could trace off the individual pattern pieces, and work out what length of bones and busk I need to order.

It’s just a very simple pattern to begin with – only eight panels – but it will have three layers and should be a very strong corset. Assuming it fits, it should reduce my waist by about two inches, hopefully without being too tight across my abdomen. We’ll see.

While I’m waiting for my bits of steel to arrive, I can start making all the layers and working out how I want to sew them together. I have a plan for the fashion fabric, in the form of an old pair of trousers which I outgrew long ago, but couldn’t bring myself to throw away.

Look out for a bright pink wool tartan corset coming this way in the near future!

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