This project is another blast from the past… Spring of 2008 to be precise. I was going to see Oysterband at Hugh’s Room and found that I had absolutely nothing to wear. I had learned a few things about corsetry from my time at the Shaw Festival, but I had never drafted one from scratch – so I cheated!
I’m really sorry, but I have no process photos for what I am about to describe. As usefull as they might have been, it was just too humiliating. I just couldn’t bear the thought of anyone seeing me like this.
Using a cheap t-shirt purchased with a 40% off coupon at Michaels and a roll of duct tape from Dollarama I followed the directions for making a Duct Tape Dress Form. There are tons of pages out there with directions for making one of these forms, here is one that I found on the Threads Magazine website. For my purposes I put on my best bra (which holds mest right) and I slipped on the tshirt and wrapped myself in duct tape. Because I wanted the corset to synch me in at the waist I sucked it all in and started taping tight around the waist. Once I was all taped up. I drew a line down my centre front and had a friend draw a line down my centre back. I also traced a line where I wanted the top and bottom of the corset to be. I also traced lines where I wanted all of my seams to be.
In deciding where I wanted all the seams to be I referred to a great book – Waisted Efforts by Robert Doyle. The specific illustrations / pages that I was looking at were the “Cadet” corset on page 175 and the “Straight front” S corset on page 184. These images helped me with seam placement and the placement of bone channels. If you’re looking for a copy of this book I have an extra which I have listed on Amazon.ca.
When I’d marked out my centre front, centre back and all of my seams I had my lovely assistant help cut me out of the t-shirt. This had to be done very carefully so as not to cut my bra by accident because that would have otherwise bee a tragedy.
Once out of the shirt I cut the centre back and discarded one half of the shirt. On the remaining half I numbered the pattern pieces from front to back and cut along the top and bottom edges and along my traced out seam lines. Then I traced these pattern pieces on to paper and added seam allowance where required. I alo drafted a 1″ extension for the centre front left which will be overlapped by the centre front right when the centre front is done up.
Most of my fabrics and findings were purchased from Farthingales in Stratford (Ontario) and they had shipped my coutil, spiral bones (precut and tipped), busk, lace bones, lace and lace (shrink) tips overnight. The black and silver silk brocade was purchased from a fabric shop in the west end of Ottawa (I can’t recall the name of the shop, but I will look it up and post it shortly).
Once the pieces were cut, I sewed from the centre front to the sides catching all layers of fabric in each seam so that the outer covering and lining were worked up at the same time. I can’t think of a good way to really explain this myself so I would suggest referring to the instructions on the Farthingales website (thy also have instructions on how to properly insert a busk and lace bones). The edges of the side seams were bound with a poly-cotton seam binding. The side back and back pieces were sewn seperately by putting the wrong sides of the brocade and lining coutil together and binding the side seams with poly-cotton seam binding. I had bound the side and side back seams so that the corset could be easily altered later if need be.
The bone channels were stitched through both laters of fabric to both sides of every seam. The side and side back seams were pressed open and the bound seam allowance was caught in the seam so that they would not shift about. An additional two bone channels were stitched across the side front panel from under the arm down, under the bust and ending at the front edge of the panel at the waist – these channels offer extra support to a heavy bust and will keep the side of the corset from caving in.
all of the bone channels were stitched I slipped all of the bones (pre-measured, cut and tipped) into the channels and closed off the top and bottom of the bone casings using a satin bias tape. I stitched the tape to the outside of the corset by machine and rolled it over the edge and tacked the inside by hand so as not to show through the outside of the corset. I probably should have made a corded edge like the Farthingales instructions show, but I was pressed for time.
The lace bones that I used at the centre back have made it so that I can tight lace the corset without the centre back buckling or twisting, but it made the back of the corset difficult to grommet. I have never bothered grommeting by hand because its mucky and seldom works, but finding a gromet machine that can handle the extra thickness of the lace bones is difficult. I was fortunate to find a seamstress in Ottawa, Edwina Richards, who had a grommeting machine and she set my grommets for me. I can’t recall how much I paid for this service, but it was well worth the cost since I had already heavily invested in quality fabrics and findings.
Once the corset was grommeted I laced the back (leaving the laces long) and tried on the corset. I laced the corset tight (as I planned to wear it, tied it properly and trimmed the ends of the lace. Once the laces were trimmed, I removed the corset and applied the shrink tips. Shrink tips are a plastic sleeve which is threaded on the end of the lace and shrunk using a heat tool or a blow drier. Once the tips were on and shrunk I trimmed the tips to clean them up… et voila! I was finished.
