Sabrina

So my whole corset boning indecision could have been totally moot if I didn't have enough fabric. I'm leaning toward the grouped boning. It's really neat because a lot of the corsets I saw have the front groups put on the outside of the corset. The casing is applied to the outside front and covers the seamlines and seam allowances.

But that means I need enough of the fashion fabric to make the casings. And I only have half a yard. With some creative manoeuvring and minimal seam allowances on some pieces (the ones that don't need to be felled), I managed to make all the pieces fit! And JUST BARELY still leave enough space for the casings (right) and binding (bottom). Yay!


And here's a bonus picture of my newly dished busk:

No pictures because my camera battery died while I was trying on my mock-up. I did manage to take one picture, but it sort of looks the same as before, which I think is silly. The picture was also taken before I had really tightened the laces, so that might be why.

Anyways, I made a couple of changes. I added some to the bust and the back hips. I also tried to straighten out the side panels, which were sort of slanted. Now, I looked at a ton of pictures of corsets from this era and some have slanted sides and some don't, so I didn't really need to straighten them out. And that was good, because my changes didn't do much anyways for that. I decided all that was good enough and cut apart my mock-up to use it as a pattern. While I was doing that I made a few very minor adjustments (we're talking millimetres per piece), mostly curving in the waist a bit more, taking a bit off the front hips, and adding a bit all the way around the bust.

Hopefully all the changes and everything will look good in the real thing. I want to get it cut out and baste together the coutil and silk/cotton satin layer this week. I need to order the boning. But I can assemble and insert the busk. I spent today's hockey game reclaiming hardware and the busk from my lime green Halloween corset as well as curving the busk so that it'd be dished. Actually worked fairly well. So more on this later.

Other than grad school application things and fiddly, thesis-formatting things, I really want to get my mock-up done for my 1880s corset this weekend. Shouldn't be too difficult, the upside of having made a bunch of different corsets already. I'm using the 1885 pattern from Jill Salen's book, without the waist belt. It's pretty curvy and I hope it makes me curvy too!

12 Challenges? I think I can manage that this year. So I'm going to join the Historical Sew Monthly.

Yeah, I tried to do a monthly/half-marathon of the Fortnightly this year and failed near the end. But that was because the thesis took over my life. Prior to that, I was doing alright. Since I won't have to work on the thesis soon I should have more time to sew. Plus, all the sewing necessary for CoCo will help me out. So, without further ado, the first three challenges:

January - Foundations: This one was easy. I wanted to make my 1880 corset and petticoat this month anyways. They're the foundation garments for at least 2 of my CoCo outfits.

February - Colour Challenge Blue: Not sure. Blue isn't a colour I'm very fond of wearing and none of my CoCo stuff even goes with blue really, except for my GoT Tyrell gown. At the moment I am considering making some blue slippers to go with that, but I don't really want to spend time on something that isn't really necesary when I have so many other things to make. My other thought is throwing some blue ribbon in the petticoat, but that seems like a cop-out. Hm...

March - Stashbusting: Definitely my Little House bustle dress, or at least the skirt for it. I have all the fabrics for it in the stash and the pattern will be coming from Fashions of the Gilded Age. Pretty excited for this outfit!

There always seems to be stuff to do! I've got my thesis going, which is getting to crunch time. There's work and family stuff and friends. Sewing is increasingly getting the short end of the stick. So far I have half of my corset pattern traced out on a mock-up fabric. That's it. I did make a trip to the fabric store the other day and got some wide, black ribbon to use as a sash for my 1790s chemise dress. There weren't very many colour options (white, red, pink, and brown were the other colours) for that width. I thought black would make a great contrast, having this portrait, which has always been a favourite of mine, in mind:

Planning on wearing it to the local Jane Austen Society of North America event that celebrates Austen's birthday.

I was good and didn't buy anything else, but saw something that was rather tempting. There was a bunch of home decor polyester fabric (labelled dupioni, but really more of a shantung or taffeta) for $4/metre. It's a pretty convincing-looking faux silk, fairly matte with just a slight sheen. And for such a price! I'm a bit of a natural fibres snob lately, but it's such a good deal. I could buy a ton of yardage without breaking the bank and make something with all the frills and furbellows, or even several somethings. What do you think LJ friends?

I think I want to use the 1885 Gold Exotic Corset pattern from Jill Salen's book, but without the belt. I wanted something very curvy and, after comparing the measurements from the Fashions of the Gilded Age Vol. 1 1883 corset to the Salen one, this one was about an inch or so bigger in bust and hips and smaller in waist. So that pattern it was. I need to enlarge it. Maybe tomorrow.

I'm going to do a layer of coutil and a layer of my pretty silk/cotton. I decided on the aqua one instead of the lavender. The lavender may one day become an 1890s corset. Especially since I realized that I have a nice long length of synthetic satin (in a sort of rusty colour) that I could make an 1890s gown out of. :)

I have all the materials I need except for boning. But I want to wait until I've done a mock-up and know what lengths I need before putting in an order.

My buttons arrived the other day! They're very pretty. I really like the mother-of-pearl ones. They're so much heavier than modern plastic buttons. The black glass ones are nice and sparkly. Even though I believe they're 1960s buttons, I saw some on a Victorian bustle bodice that looked very similar. And they were a good deal, so I couldn't pass it up!

As I said before, it looks like I will be able to go to Costume College next year (barring any wrenches in the works, like not being able to get a membership). This is influencing my sewing plans for the coming year. The theme for next year's CoCo is literary characters and I have several ideas for things I'd like to make or will be making. So here they are:

1. Game of Thrones costume. While I'd love to jump on the wonderful bandwagon that is King's Landing style dresses, unless I'm able to find the right fabric at the right price, such a project will have to remain a pipe dream for the foreseeable future. However, my Margaery Tyrell gown also fits the bill and it will be fun to get even more wear out of it, especially considering the amount of time I've invested in it.

2. Jane Austen themed outfit. Once I finish my stays (which I plan to get done this month) I'll be free to make up a Regency gown. At the moment I am leaning toward a striped pelisse/morning gown c.1815 like these examples from the Kyoto Costume Institute and the Met. I have some sateen with white and yellow stripes that I think would work well for this.


3. Little House on the Prairie dress, c.1883. This is something I would need to pretty much start from the foundations up. I'll need a corset, chemise, a couple of petticoats, and a dress. Conveniently, I already made a suitable bustle pad this year. I have the supplies to make the corset, but I think I want to dye my coutil salmon having seen this corset on Pinterest:

I still need a bunch of plain white cotton for the chemise and petticoats, but my recent excursion to the fabric store resulted in some narrow beading lace to use on the chemise. I also have several metres of a floral cotton print, it's an orange and olive print on ivory. I'm not entirely sure on what the dress will look like, but maybe a 3-piece outfit with plain bodice, underskirt (with a flounce or several), and a bustled overskirt.

4. 1882 Snow Queen dress. This one would be for the Gala. I'm following jenthompson's lead with the historical fairy tale theme. I want something like this Worth gown in the Met and this other picture I found online.

For this I have the pale silk I bought in London that I want to dye a pale ice blue. I also want to get a ton of white silk gauze to drape over it. (Looking at the Met website, there actually seem to have been a lot of dresses in the white and aqua combo.) Instead of just flowers, I'll do snowflakes and icicles and maybe some white flowers and frosty looking ribbon bows, depending on what I'm able to find.

5. An Edwardian something, c.1909. No real thoughts on the literariness of this one, but I already have the corset and a chemise. I'd just need a petticoat. I want to make a cotton net blouse and then use my green silk-cotton to make a sort of jumper dress that would go over it. That way I could use the blouse for multiple gowns. Something like this, with pintucked sleeves and the slightly raised waist of the transitional styles of 1908-1910, which I love.

This outfit may also demand a ridiculously large hat. Maybe I can throw some flowers on the hat and call it a Secret Garden outfit?

Other thoughts include a 1790s riding habit (for which I have all the fabrics, but none of the notions, which could be expensive to acquire), an 1877 pink and white striped polonaise, and a 1950s playsuit. None of these are really literary themed either, but things that I want. Any other sewing I do will probably be more every day clothing, like pants and jackets and dresses.

What do you think? What are your dream sewing plans for the coming year?

These ones are of my green fairy costume corset. The pattern is the 1860 corset from Jill Salen's book. It's the one pictured on the cover.
( Pictures! )

I have more pictures of all the details, but I'll spare you because I really just went kinda camera-happy. Final thoughts: I did like how it looked, except for the horrible wrinkles, but that's just lack of experience with satin. It was really comfortable to wear. (I wore it for several hours of dancing and partying.) I took in one side of the bust just a tiny smidge too much. The shape isn't quite what I'd like it to be. And I think the bustline may actually be too high for 1880. But those are all easily changed. So overall, I'm pretty happy with my first corset.

Thanks to the great advice of many people, I was able to make some adjustments on my mock-up. I made lots of little corrections here and there and cut out a new mock-up with the adjusted pieces and sewed it up yesterday using my busk and the steels that arrived the other week. It is So Much Better. The back is almost completely parallel (I may have added just a touch too much to the hips.) and all the wonky bust business seems sorted out. The only problem is that I got spring steel bones for certain seams that I think should really have spiral steels. The way the seam curve causes the bones to stick out at the bottom. I'm going to order some more spirals for these seams instead. There's just the tiniest adjustment to make on the bust curve of one side to give a better shape and then it'll be good to go.

However, I had ordered that brocade, but it still isn't here (although the lawn did come). Now, I planned on making this corset for a green fairy Hallowe'en costume and I want to hurry up and get started on that. So I've decided to make the costume using my mock-up fabric (which is a really stiff, plain-weave cotton that feels like the coutil I have in terms of hand) and some green fabric that I'd have to buy anyways to make a skirt. And to use some cable ties instead of waiting to order the spirals. The narrow cable ties seem to do an adequate job on those seams (I tried them yesterday). And so, it's fabric shopping time tomorrow! :)

I was wondering about a couple construction techniques for my 1880 corset and so I did some research. What I learned by looking at lots of pics:

Lace on the top of corsets was sewn on by hand at the end of construction. This was discovered thanks to Lara Corsets as seen here and here.

Also, since I'm doing a silk brocade corset, I wanted to figure out how to bind it; twill tape, bias binding, straight grain, et c. After some careful zooming of two silk corsets on the Met site (which has several new corsets up on their collection database!), I think I've determined that these ones have binding of the fashion fabric cut on the straight of grain. Check them out here and here.

I think that's enough posting for today.