SHANNON'Sdresses

Making ofLate Victorian corset

This is a second go at corsetry, using a Simplicity pattern this time, namely #5726. The last one I made didn't quite come out with the shape that I had hoped for, and I learnt from a few construction errors I made, so this one is promising to be heaps better. As you can see in the picture I'm putting boning casings using cotton tape on the inside instead of stitching the casings inbetween the corset fabric and lining like I did on the last one. This one does have a lining but it's stitched straight to the outer fabric, and the casings are attached afterwards. Only the middle casing has been attached here, and you can see that the rest of the seams have been finished in a flat felled seam as Simplicity calls it - good trick to learn, as I had never heard of it before.

Buying boning for garments such as corsets can get rediculously expensive, so I thought that at least for my first few practice ones I'd use some good ol' kiwi ingenuity to make my own. I hunted through SO many bookshops in town to find a light coloured plastic document folder, and finally found a clear one at K-Mart. Typical. I then cut this into strips of about 1.3cm, rounded the ends, and slid two or three of these into each boning casing, depending on how strong it needed to be. Worked pretty well actually. AND I put boning at the very back, beside where the eyelets will be, so it won't bunch when I lace it up like the last one did.

Here is the last stage of the corset. All it needs is the eyelets to be attached at the back, which I am awaiting from Trademe. This pattern seems to have a much nicer shape than the last one - in fact the last one didn't seem to have much shape at all, but this one, this one I think I'll really have to squeeze into. Good times. I wish I could have put a steel busk down the centre front, but for one thing I don't think you can actually get them where I live, and I didn't want to waste one in case I stuffed it up, but I reckon it would have been real awesome. Maybe next time if I can get my hands on one.