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trishmishtree · 3 years

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Corset-Making Chronicles: Part 1

Since I've been doing a lot of sewing recently and posting the finished products, I thought I'd document my endeavors to make a corset.

Ok so first off, I have to disclaim that I have never made a corset before and I'm probably (definitely) not doing this the historically accurate way. This is happening primarily because I happened to fall down the 3am youtube rabbit hole of historical costuming and found myself very much wanting to try my hand at it. (That, and I made this really pretty circle skirt a few months ago, but the only shirt/blouse I own that matches it does this very annoying muffin-top thing when I wear it, so I thought a corset worn over it would help make it NOT do muffin-top things. So this is meant to be a modern fashion corset thingy, not historically correct underwear.)

I'm not following a commercial pattern because I don't have one, and I don't even have instructions for drafting a corset. I only have me and my stupid engineer brain that decided it wanted to do this all from scratch with only the materials and very rudimentary methods I have at my disposal. That is, I'm designing it myself, and the whole thing is going to be hand sewn. Because I don't own a sewing machine.

Another disclaimer: I actually didn't need to make more than one mock-up. That's because I made a dress earlier this year for my friends' wedding (might show pictures if my friends send me some because I didn't take any at the wedding at all), and the bodice of that dress was based off a pattern that I took by tracing an old dress that I own that I know fits me snugly. I still had the pattern from that, so I only had to omit the unnecessary bits from the bodice pattern and then I had the pattern I needed for a corset.

Anyways, I made my pattern and traced and cut out the pieces. I found this heavy pale pink canvas fabric that will make up the inside, and this pretty floral fabric for the outside.

The canvas layers are cut out twice (not shown above), since they are going to make the boning channels by having the bones of the corset sandwiched between them. Then I flat-lined the floral fabric to one of the canvas layers.

^basted with pad-stitching and then running-stitched them together just inside the stitch lines, and then removed the basting threads

^flat-lining compete. I know the back panel on the left is super wrinkly in the picture, but I touched it up with steam and an iron and it was fine. I'm lowkey really proud of how neat the running stitches turned out, since I was kind of disappointed with the ones I did on my wallet. In a shocking turn of events, your stitches end up looking neater (instead of looking like you were trying to beat the fabric into submission) when you use a smaller, thinner needle 😱😱😱

Next step is to sew the panels to each other.

jk I got distracted by my cat being cute 😍

Ahem.

^The ugly thing on top is the inner canvas layer, with a strip of cotton twill basted in as a waist tape. The basting stitches will come out later once I put the whole thing together and stitch in boning channels.

Speaking of putting the whole thing together, that's what I'm trying to do now but it's taking an unreasonable amount of time, so I guess there's going be a Part 2 to this later.

Still to come are sewing in the boning channels, adding boning, binding the edges, and punching in eyelets. I'm not going to put a busk into this because 1) I don't have a busk and 2) I actually like the look of lacing in the front. I think I'm going to make the lacing in the front purely decorative, and have the laces in the back be functional. I'm not a fashion historian by any means, but from what I have seen, typically front lacing is seen on stays, not corsets. However, this is supposed to be a modern fashion piece, not a period-accurate undergarment, so if I want lacing in both the front and back, then I get to put lacing in both the front and back.

Anyway, if you enjoy seeing nice flat panels and perfectly pressed seams, now is your chance to look away because things are about to get super wrinkly and bunchy as we get into putting in boning channels.

#tricia sews (kind of)#corsetry #corset making #sewing #hand sewing #me looking at my mountain of a fabric stash that has overwhelmed the plastic bin i keep it in #'ok who put me in charge of me?'

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