As much as I love the early 1800's, I have recently found myself wandering into the realm of the 1700's, mostly 1750 on, although I am sure I will eventually drift further backwards in the century...but for now, my fuzzy-focus has been on the latter half. I'm not at the point where I want to dive right into a new gown project (although I do have some future project ideas), however I have been working on getting the foundation pieces together. So, where better to begin than with a nice 1776 corset?
This is my third corset now, and only the second one that really required any serious boning. My first corset, which has yet to get its own blog entry, was an early Victorian (er, I think...my knowledge of the Victorian era is a little thin) which I bought an entire kit for, with coutil, busk, bones and boning tape all included. Yay! It was nice and easy, but not really cheep. For this corset (or stays really), I didn't want to spend $50+. Since it doesn't have a busk, and I don't do metal grommets if I can help it, it was already going to be cheaper.
What I ended up using, happily, was:
-My first-ever Corsets and Crinolines (by Norah Waugh) pattern! yay! This time, I used a scanner and some tabloid paper to scale up the pattern pieces, and it worked very well. Much, much easier than scaling by hand. I think I will be using the computer from now on for this process whenever possible.
-A brocade fabric for the front, with the "wrong" side used instead of the right side. I read somewhere (can't remember where) that this can be a nice trick for making modern fabrics look more period-correct. The best part though, is that the fabric was from a set of valences I bought at Good Will for about $3.50 I think. Now, how can you beat that?!?!
-For the inside, I used some remnant green fabric I had on hand from my Renaissance skirt that I made back in September (yet again, blog entry pending). I'm not even sure what it is, but its of a medium weight and sturdy enough looking. It ended up working well.
-For the lining, I think I am just going to use some white cotton that I have on hand. We shall see.
-For the boning, my new favorite material: Cable Ties!!! For about $8.00 for 10 yard-long pieces at my wonderfully local home improvement store, you just can not beat it for convenience and price!! And, even though they are a bit wider that I might like and a pain in the butt to cut with scissors, they are really wonderfully effective as boning. I'm not sure I will ever want to use steel again.
As the lame pictures will tell you, I am still in the process of hand sewing all the channels shut, as well as making the grommets. Here is hoping that all the hand sewing practice will improve my skill...and not leave me with carpel tunnel. In the future I will hopefully have some pics for you with this on my dress form. At the moment I still have my open robe pinned to it.
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