In Search of Armor: Kidney belt

With my gambeson done, I could start on the rigid layers of my kit, which needed to be fitted over the padded garment to avoid accidentally ending up with something that didn't fit at all.  I decided to start with my kidney belt, which will go under my tunic. I had some dilemma over how to design this item. Most of the guys who use a kidney belt sort of protection just use a straight belt. For someone with as much hip as I have, that didn't sound like a comfortable option, especially with the weight of my leg gear hanging off of it. It seemed like the best solution would be to have it extend slightly over my hips, not far enough to limit motion, but far enough to solidly seat the weight there and keep it from digging in. I immediately thought of the shape of a "waspie" corset. It seemed to me to be the ideal amount of coverage, so long as it was adapted to be snug, but not create a reduction in waist measurement.

I set about making a pattern. Drafting from my block, I made a basic short, 8 panel corset pattern, fastening on either side of a center front panel to allow adjustments in waist size. I cut it out in some canvas, and fitted it, taking tucks where it needed to be reduced. Once the fit was comfortable, I transferred the alterations to the patterns, and then double checked the final waist measurement of the mockup against my own. It was exactly the same, so I reduced the front panel a little further to allow room for lacing.

you will note that I have both the number and
an arrow on every one of these patterns. Corset
patterns can be ambiguous as to which way is
up. Using an arrow means you won't put
them together wrong. it's worth the time

I had originally planned to just cut the panels directly out of heavy leather, then lace them together. After further thought I decide that this was inadvisable. People who make corsets become aware, quickly, that leather, although beautifully stiff, and not needing extensive boning, stretches and distorts under pressure. Particularly if it has moisture and heat. Strapped to the body of a hot sweaty fighter seems like the perfect situation for leather to stretch totally out of shape, particularly given mumblety mumblety pounds of leg harness hanging from it. So I decided that a better option would be to rivet the leather plates directly to a fabric base, a fabric base made of something not terribly stretchy, but still comfortable and breathable. The corsetierre in me immediately suggested coutil as the best option. Although this belt wouldn't experience the pressure exerted on my corsets, it does share some of same attributes. As a bonus, I still had some good quality german coutil lying around, so I fished it out and traced the pattern.

How to manage the seams was the next question. When I make corsets I prefer to use an elaborate folded seam system that eliminates bulk and creates a boning channel. This wasn't going to NEED boning channels, and the origami element of that seemed tedious and unnecessary. I could likewise just put the seams to the outside, and hope the riveted leather plates would cover them. That seemed like leaving too much to chance though. if the seams worked free and poked out between the plates it would be unsightly and it wouldn't wear well.  I finally decided on a partial lining to cover the seams as being easy, attractive, and practical. Seam binding would have worked too, but I still had some of the skull fabric from my gauntlets lying around and wanted to use it, and it wouldn't have shown to advantage cut into small strips for seam binding.

Once I got it all together I wrapped it around me and bent back and forth a couple times. This set a wrinkle at the waist, which marks the spot for me to sew in a waist tape, a further precaution against stretching out of shape. Probably overkill, but a 10 minute investment now guards against a total re-do six months down the road.






Waist tape on, I bound all the edges with bias tape. Bright red and black are the colors of  the household I fight with, so it seemed like a good choice. Plus I like the red with the silver skulls. The belt was now ready to have the armory bits riveted to the outside of it.







To do this I first folded back the seam allowance on all my pattern pieces, and traced them onto leather with the tip of my awl. I cut them out carefully with an exacto knife, and rounded off any sharp corners a bit. Then I punched even holes along the vertical edges for rivets. Now  I had to decide whether I was going to water shape them or not. I didn't want the belt to be rigid, like my gauntlet backs, or even as hard as my hot water hardened rerebraces, but it was instantly obvious that the pieces over my hips and the center back would HAVE to be shaped. I decided in the end to wear it for a while and see if heat and sweat would be enough to shape it, or if it needed to be sprayed with water and cinched down to take a better shape.

The remainder of the construction was annoying and time consuming, but not difficult. I lined up the leather panels with the corresponding fabric panels, making a hole with my tailors awl, I inserted a small pop rivet, and riveted on the leather onto the fabric. Then I mounted d-rings and straps to the front. I also punched holes for laces to point my current set of legs on. I'd like to eventually buckle the legs rather than tie them, but these aren't' my final legs (and I'm not even sure what I"m going to do for final legs yet) so  I decided pointing them on was the easiest method for now.

             

Shakedown cruise proved that the concept is GREAT. Very comfortable, good protection. My leg armor stayed put beautifully, and the weight was much more comfortably supported than by belt or pourpoint. The heat and sweat did adequately shape the panels, so I don't think further shaping will be necessary. On the down side, the sythentic strapping I used in the d-rings is slippery when it's sweaty, and so the belt doesn't stay cinched. Also evidently my pop rivets can't get enough purchase through the strapping to be secure long  term, and I did lose a strap. I also found I didn't really need d-rings for adjustment on both sides, since really it was most comfortable completely closed. I ended up attaching one edge permenantly, and using cotton strappping and D-rings on the other side. If it continues to slip out while I fight,  I can always go to buckles.

A Pair of Sort of Elizabethan Bodies (The lady in white project)

The why of this particular project is somewhat dubious. I'm making a front laced venetian gown inspired by the titian portrait "A Lady in White" While this is mostly a fairly straightforward operation, it does have it's own pitfalls. Since there aren't any surviving gowns (That I've been able to find) to solve the issue, there's a lively debate on the internet about what layers they were actually wearing, Is it a boned bodice? it is there a stiffened undergarment? What exactly is going on here? The plausible explanations seem to be these: a) a stiffened or boned pair of bodies under the camica, probably with a slip underneath them. b) No bodies, but the gown itself is boned/stiffened c) bodies over camica, and then a pleated stomacher, d) some sort of stiffened pleated undergown. Of these options, I find A and B the most plausible based on the bulk of the pictures that I've seen. They just don't seem to have the stiff front line that a stomacher or undergown would give you, although in most cases SOMETHING is clearly giving the gown a shape.

There has been a lot of discussion about this painting, by Bernardino Licinio "A Woman Combing Her Hair" This woman is clearly wearing some sort of stiffened overgown over her camica which appears to possibly be pleated. This does solve all the construction difficulties quite neatly, like "how do you wear petticoats" and also "What about a bum roll" But I just don't feel like the majority of the portraits and engravings show the distinctive bustline given by this sort of undergown. So while it obviously did exist, I don't think it was necessarily the norm. In the end, without any existing garments or real period descriptions, all we have is paintings and speculation. My final decision to make a pair of bodies was based on two things: First,I thought  it would most closely recreate the shape in the Titian portrait, and second, the fact that I could wear a pair of bodies under other late period gowns. A tertiary consideration was that a friend pointed out to me that boned gowns tend to show the boning after you wear them a few times, no matter how many layers you use, which obviously doesn't match up with the portraits. Which isn't to say that some of those gowns weren't stiffened with something else. More on that later.

There's really only two sources for Elizabethan bodies patterns: The queen elizabeth effigy bodies, which are very late period, and the 1598 pair of bodies (still very late period) belonging to Pfalzgrafin Dorothea Sabina Von Neuburg found in Janet Arnold's patterns of fashion. For my purposes the Neuburg bodies are a better shape, so I drafted them to my measurements and mocked them up. This is where I hit the first snag. I have a very large difference between my rib measurement and bust measurement. Especially since I'm breastfeeding right now. 10 inches to be exact. and the straight cut of these bodies just couldn't handle the curve. There was a large diagonal empty space from my armpit under my bust to my center front. Worser and worser, it was the dreaded "fish eye" space: pointed at both ends, impossible to walk out of the pattern.  Now, when drafting any conical shaped boned garment, stays or bodies, there is going to be some gapping, because the human body is not cone shaped. Some of this works itself out when you lace up: flesh squishes around to fill the voids. Some of it can be solved by small pillows under the bust (particularly this is in either very small chested or larger chested women, where the bust tends to sink into the the body of the garment as wear goes on) But this gap was really not one that could be dealt with by padding, and it didn't go away with lacing. So I was faced with a conundrum: Stick to the absolute period pattern, and be uncomfortable, plus possibly have my boobs migrate down into my bodice over the course of the evening, or alter the pattern out of strictly proveable period boundaries. My decision was to opt for comfort. I borrowed patterning from a later pair of stays, and made them five pieces rather than three, with a diagonal seam along the side front. Since I was already altering the pattern, I just went ahead and made attached tabs that the boning runs down into to keep the boning from stabbing me in the hips.

The next question is one of materials. We know that period women wore colorful undergarments in linen and silk, boned with reed, or whalebone. There's also growing evidence of stiffened undergarments made of layers of glued together linen. It's looking more and more likely that many tudor gowns owed their shape to kirtles stiffened by this method, and that boning was a later invention all together (The folks over at the Tudor Tailor have done some interesting work on this theory). Again, we run into the problem of surviving garments and primary sources. We can't be 100% sure at what point in history the boned bodies showed up, or how universally they were adopted. The venetian gowns could have been stiffened with paste and linen in the gown itself, avoiding the boning showing through the gown. Or they could have been worn over a paste stiffened linen undergown or pair of bodies. It's impossible to know. Certainly some of the portraits show wrinkling of the gown along the sides that wouldn't be typical of a garment worn over a whaleboned or reeded pair of bodies.

With this information in mind, I set about choosing my own materials. Since I was already straying from historical accuracy with the pattern, I did think for about ten minutes about just giving up and using coutil, but decided instead to try and stick as closely as possible to period fabrics. I used an inner layer of heavy linen, and an outer layer of silk underlined with horsehair fabric. What you ask is horsehair fabric? It's a stiff fabric typically made of horsehair and linen used in modern tailoring to give shape to collars and lapels. It is a period fabric, and it's ideal for corsetry because it really doesn't stretch. For the silk, in spite of period women's love for color, I chose white for the front, to keep it from showing through the camica, and pulled some lovely peach from my stash for the rest of it. I used 4 metal bones in the front to simulate a busk, as well as two in the back to firm up the lacing edges. The rest of the bodies is boned with heavy duty cable ties, which seem to be an excellent modern aproximation of whalebone. Unlike the evil flimsy plastic boning, they do not buckle and stab you, and they're easy to use and cheap.

After cutting the pieces and putting them together, clipping the seams where necessary and pressing them open, I stay stitched all around the edges of the silk and horsehair linen to keep them from sliding. Then I sewed the center front and center back and graded the seam to reduce bulk. You can see the single sew on tab in the brown linen here, all the rest of the tabs where cut into the piece. On the sewn in tab it is really important to be SURE that you press the seam allowances down towards the tabs. Resist the temptation to press one layer up and one down to reduce bulk, because if you do that when you try to slide the boning in it will get stuck and there will be a lot of muttering. Judicious grading of the seam reduces bulk greatly without catching your boning.

 With everything flipped right side out, I sewed the edge boning channel (which keeps things flat and still) and then marked all the rest of the boning channels. The original garment has no boning over the bust area, which is something I had never seen before, but decided to try. The original garment also had vertical boning from busk around to the side seams, but that was going to be tricky with the new curved side front seam I had added. I perused my corsetry books, and decided to use the boning pattern from the same (post period) pair of stays I had taken the side front seam from, which has vertical boning in the front, then a piece running along the seam, and the rest sort of fanning from the armpit the side back seam. I then pinned through the seams to make sure everything was really thoroughly lined up before I started sewing the boning channels.

I chose a dark plum 30 weight cotton thread to sew the boning channels on the peach silk: I thought it provided a nice contrast. I sewed the channels in the back side first, moving from the center back towards the front. Then I carefully hand stitched "in the ditch" of the stitching line, through the side front seam, stitching the two seams together so that everything was absolutely lined up, and providing a stop for the boning in the front that ended on the seam. I used a small backstitch for strength and because it's easier to work small through thick fabrics. Then I sewed the front boning chanels.

with all the boning channels sewn, I bound the bottom tabs (which is far easier on an unboned garment: It's easier to wrangle, and there's not the risk of breaking sewing machine needles on bones) This was where I had my big oopsie. I had decided to quilt the unboned bust areas while I was sewing the front boning channels. It occured to me this would be much easier with an unboned garment. I had quilted one bust area when I realized that I had already bound the bottom of the garment, and it would be impossible to put the bones in. At this point I just went to bed.

When I got up and was ready to face the boning, I started with the metal bones, 4 center front, and one on each side of the center back opening. These are spring steel, which I buy by the roll from corsetry supply. After cutting it with my own personal bolt cutters (For corsetry only. Husband get your own!) I wrapped the end in plumbers tape. This brilliant little hack keeps the edges of the metal from rubbing through the fabric. With the metal bones done, I set about boning the rest of it with the cable ties. Although it is possible to cut these with scissors the bolt cutters are easier. I then use a lighter to slightly melt the end and roll them against a heat resistant surface to gently round any sharp edges that might abrade the fabric.

I boned everything possible before I had to face up to the place where I had cleverly closed off both ends of the boning channels. I had to slit the top of each boning channel with a sharp seam ripper, slide the bone in, then sew the top of the channel closed, using very long stitches to keep them from tearing out. I will go back later and put a small patch of linen over the area on the inside to further reinforce it. I muttered a lot.


With the boning done, I only had to quilt the second bust area, bind the top and armpits, and set the grommets. I had originally planned to work hand eyelets over metal rings, but I needed to finish so I could start working on the bodice of my gown, so I just used metal grommets, set with the usual bodkin and grommet setting tool method. The silk did tend to rip rather than spread when i used the bodkin, and has since started to pull away from the grommets. I think it's mostly because this silk is old, and it may be a bit fragile for this usage, but if I set grommets in silk again, I will use fray check after I make the hole with the bodkin.

The only further problem I had was that the first time I laced it up one of the side seams popped. I don't know if I just didn't backtack it enough, or quite what, but the end of that seam is under a lot of pressure when you lace up. I repaired it with a lot of hand satin stitching over the seam, and secured the other side with a little bit of flossing, and it hasn't moved. Next time instead of ironing those seams open I will iron one left, one right, then when I sew the boning channels it will secure through the seam allowances and the pressure won't just be on a single seam end point. 

Over my camica, which I typically wear it under.
A big advantage of the boned tabs is that on me they make
a bumroll unecessary. 

you can see where the silk ripped out of the shoulder seams and around the grommets.
I have a pretty big gap in the back. I am slowly losing baby weight,
and wanted this to still fit in a year or so. You can also see the incredible bend the zip ties make without buckling on my side back tabs.  

Adding hip ties to a Mystic City corset

I decided that I was not going to make myself a new corset for the period immediately postpartum, because it would just be ridiculous trying to put the hours of work in with a new baby. I didn't want to use my old crappy tubular off the rack model though. Making my first corset for myself last year really opened my eyes to the amazing difference a good fit makes, especially if you're further from average in terms of dimensions. The problem is that I'm pretty severely pear shaped, small ribcage, wide hips, small natural waist, and with that I'm tall. With my pre pregnancy measurements I looked around and decided that the MCC 68 was giong to be the best fit for me, both in terms of measurements and because it has a tall back, and just about the longest front you will get off the rack. Alas it does not have hip ties, and the hip measurement is a hair on the small side. I dithered for a while, but when Mystic City had a sample sale, and the almost identical MCC3 was available for a great discount, I couldn't resist. I bought it and figured I would alter it later by adding hip ties to open it up. I can't claim to have invented this process. I learned how to do it from the excellent video tutorial from Lucy's corsetry. This blog though will walk through the steps to do it on a Mystic City corset which has its own unique construction. It may be interesting to anyone thinking of doing the same thing to their own, but if you are I highly recommend you watch Lucy's video as well.

Here's my corset before I did the ties. You can see that I can't reduce the waist any further without bowing and possibly distorting the bones. it's also a more cupped hip shape than I need. You can see it's full up high (where I actually have a little extra room, and beginning to cut into my hips lower down.

 The first thing I did was remove the modesty panel and lacing. I marked where the bunny ears were with some nail polish on the inside of the grommets. I may move the bunny ears up one grommet though, as you can see in the back picture it looks like they're just below my natural waist and the waist tape. You can also see here how I've bent the back bones. Believe it or not I could use to bend them a bit more.

 Then I removed the bottom binding past the first set of hip boning, this is where I need the room the most, and so where I will put in the hip ties. I decided to start the hip ties about where the hip starts to curve in dramatically, since I don't need room in the high hip, just the low hip. I marked the top of the hip tie with chalk, and removed the side bones. I marked the side bones with which side and whether it was the front or back bone. These bones seem to be identical, but it's still good practice to put the bones back where they came from.

 As you can see, this corset is constructed with felled seams. The seam allowances all point one direction instead of being pressed open. Thus the pieces are handled with the lining and the exterior fabric together. It's a good construction method but makes this whole process a bit trickier. You can see as I unpick the seem how on one side the seam allowances for the lining and exterior are folded in, then the other panel with the seam allowances facing forward is slotted between the layers. Then the whole thing is top stitched together, and the boning channels are sewn. I believe there's actually a special

 attachment in the factory that they use to do this accurately. When I've done similar things it's required a lot of basting..... Anyhow, I took the seams out about an inch past the top of my desired opening to give me room to work, and picked out all the leftover thread ends.

 Here's the only tricky part. Now you have to clip the seam allowance on the side that was slotted in and has the seam allowances facing forward. This will allow me to turn those seam allowances in for the part that is going to be open, while leaving the rest of the seam enclosed in the body of the corset. I clipped at the top of my desired opening just exactly to the seam line. No more. No less.

 This allowed me to turn the seam allowances in, press them, top stitch very close to the edge up just past where I had clipped, then re sew the other edge of the boning channel, sewing over the remaining stitching that I had not ripped out in the main body of the corset. It's important to overlap where you stopped seam ripping by at least an inch or so: this keeps the seam from continuing to unravel on its own.

 Now the tricky part. I slotted the seam back together to the place where I had clipped it. Then I pinned the top (the horizontal pin) to keep it from sliding apart. Then I pinned the the lining and the exterior together to keep the panels from sliding while I sewed. Now I top sttiched along very close to the edge, and up over my pin, overlapping the orignal seam. I then backtacked for extra strength.

 Now I could sew the exterior stitching line for the boning chanel, again, overlapping the original seam. The last thing I did, which is probably overkill, was to tack back and forth at the very top of the slit to keep pressure off the join. It's only three stitches back and forth to keep from interfereing with the boning channels but it's a bit of insurance.

After that it was just a matter of marking and setting the grommets outside the boning chanels. I marked both sides with pins, then set the grommets using a hand grommet setter, and a tailors awl. I would really like to get one of the fancy bench mount grommet setters that more easily mount larger two piece grommets, but until then, these smaller single piece grommets hold well on low stress applications (like hip ties)  I set ten grommets on each slit, five on each side. I got stuck here for about a week and a half while I debated ribbbon colors, didn't get out to the store to buy new ribbons, and tried to decide whether I should add some lace applique over the hips while I had the binding off.

       I eventually decided against the lace. More because I wanted my corset done and back than because I didn't want it! I also decided to use the flat cord laces that came as an alternate with my corset  for a while. They're easier to undo and redo and I want to try several different ways of lacing up the back until I come up with something easier to do up myself. The high back of this corset was making me have to just about dislocate my shoulder getting the top tight, and I was having trouble finding which ribbons to pull. The solution was having my husband lace me up, but that's not always practical. Here it's laced "straight" with bunny ears, as per Lucy's Corsetry video tutorial.

I laced the hip ties with 3/8 inch black double sided satin ribbon that I happened to have. It matches the laces for now. When I figure out what lacing pattern I want to use I will go back to the colored satin laces (they're so pretty) and will match the hip tie ribbons to whatever color I choose (likely kawasaki racing green....).  I put the original binding back on, which was a little tricky since it had to cover a bit more ground. I fudged folding it under at the tips of the slit a little, and had to tidy it up with a few hand stitches, but overall it went better than could be expected. The binding is some sort of synthetic grosgrain, which is amazingly flexible, and is simply topstiched on.

Here you can see the finished product. About four hours of work all told, start to finish (most of that in setting grometts and seam ripping), and a week and a half of dithering over colors and lace. The fit is hugely improved. It no longer digs into my lower hips, and the lacing gap is nice and straight. I was also able to close it a little further comfortably even though I haven't worn anything in almost two weeks! I did take the lacing protector panel out. The heavy boning in it was nice when I had a bigger gap, but with the moderate gap I have now it didn't seem neccesary. I will say that these flat shoestring style laces cut into my back a bit without it. I may put it back in until I get my final laces and then try again without. It may also partially be this "straight" lacing style, because all the crosses are at the inside, I seem to be able to feel them against my back more than other types of lacing, which is a downside to it. On the positive it's very easy to Iace myself up this way. I may try chevron lacing next, that would lie flatter inside the corset.

Victorian Overbust Corset

I really wanted to get this done for the historical sew monthly January challenge, foundations, but ended up not finishing it in time. I was dissapointed not to make the deadline, but I have finally finished it! I'm really excited about this corset. My husband gave me a Laughing Moon bust gore overbust corset kit last year for christmas and it's been marinating in the pile of projects. I hadn't gotten to it partially because it's sort of an impractical and selfish project, and partially because, with all my sewing experience, corsetry intimidates me. It's a whole field of it's own, with it's own unique intricacies and skillset. Just because you can draft and fit a bodice doesn't mean you can properly fit a corset: corsets not only have to mirror the shape of your body perfectly, they mold your body into new dimensions. Once you've passed the cylindrical shape of stays, which do not take personal shape into that much consideration (hey, we're making you into a cone here.... The only real considerations are the dimensions of the cone.) corsetry becomes a complicated and fascinating art.

I've been fascinated with corsets pretty much forever. When I was 13 or so I made my china doll a full civil war ensemble from the cardstock boned corset up, and the fascination has pretty much stuck. I love the costumes you wear OVER a corset, from the sweeping skirts of the civil war era to the "pouter pigeon" look of the edwardian era, to the nipped waist and sweeping circle skirts of the 50's (Girdles: the best friend of the "new look," and the slightly stretchy relative of the corset.) I love the way that corsets allow you to fit garments, the precise tailoring that is possible in bodices when you don't have to allow ease for things like.... breathing...  I just love corsets too. I find them beautiful and historically fascinating. They've been an intrinsic part of women's lives, and women's clothes for centuries. They've been everything from a practical way to support the breasts and the back, to a restrictive symbol of social status and women's place in the world. And they've been a factor in the views of what was beautiful, both in public and private. It's no coincidence that while the clothed silouttes of the victorian era feature defined waists, nudes of the period show a sensuality far removed from our own: women with full limbs and soft stomachs: the shape of a woman who had worn a corset since childhood. From Catherine de Medici's vanity to Queen Victoria's views on propriety: stays and corsets have been the shape of fashion right through the modern era.

I myself have been wearing a corset off and on for the last few years. Carrying my second son so close to my first I had a fairly severe diastasis recti, the separation of the abdominal muscles, and a girdle was reccomended as part of the postpartum treatment of that condition. I found that the plastic bones in the girdle buckled at the waist and stabbed me. Having worked around boning enough to know one end from another I decided that spiral steel would be more comfortable for me, and got an off the rack corset. The increase in comfort was astronomical, and I found that I enjoy wearing a corset, and like the look it gives me under some of my 40's and 50's style clothes. Unfortunately that corset had some fit problems, mostly because I'm very tall and have a large hip to waist ratio. I complained about that and threatened to draft a corset pattern out of one of my corsetry books, but was never quite brave enough to take the plunge because of my inexperience with corsetry. Enter my dear husband with a corset kit as a christmas gift.

The kit I recieved was from Corsetmaking.com and included all the supplies and some of the tools neccesary for the Laughing moon Silverado bust gore corset. The bust gore corset is recommended for ladies who have a fairly large difference in size between their ribcage and bust. It gives you more flexability there to get a good fit. I am not overly endowed, but I do have a relatively small ribcage, which makes it a better choice for me. Also the Siverado is longer than it's goreless relative the Dore, and since I'm tall, that's a consideration in fit as well. And yes. My wonderful husband did all the research to figure this out himself after only minor consultation with my sister. In addition to the Laughing moon #100 ladies underwear 1840-1900 pattern, the kit included a tailors awl, boning, boning tape, waist tape, lacing, gromets, busk, and measured capped bones. It is avialable with coutil included, although my husband chose it without so I could choose my own. They also offer grommet setting tools and various other tools as reccomended add ons, but I already had those things. I am sorry to say that I cannot recommend this kit though. There were things in the kit that you didn't need if you followed the instructions (boning channel tape) which was just confusing. The real problem was that more than half of the bones were the wrong length, even though I made the corset in the correct size. I still like corsetmaking.com as a supplier, just don't buy their kits. I prefer Farthingales I think on the whole, but they don't sell coutil from their US. store, so shipping is exorbitant.

* Update as of 4/20/15 Corsetmaking.com has sent me a very nice response to the poor (and slightly grumpy) review I left on the kit. They went through and measured the pieces in the pattern and checked against their boning specs. Turns out that the pattern had changed and no one told them. They are fixing the kit and checking their other kits. I still think it may be better to buy boning and tips and do it yourself to account for changes to the pattern during fitting, but think that if you didn't have the equipment to easily cut/tip boning this could be a good alternative. 

The laughing moon pattern is great though. The instructions are copious and clear. The single complaint I have with this pattern is that the instructions are printed on the same GIANT paper as the patterns themselves, with a small note telling you that if you find the instructions "unwieldly" in that format you may cut them along the lines to make them more manageable. So you spend half an hour cutting some 40 pages to size and then ironing them flat. Then you spend the entire construction process ruffling through pile trying to find the page number you need, and having them get knocked over by your cat.... So. I wish they would print the instructions as a sort of booklet for you. Failing that learn from me and put them in a binder after you've cut them out and ironed them flat.....

The first thing I did, before I even traced the pattern off, was to make a pair of lacing tapes. All these are is strips of waste fabric folded like bias tape with small buttonholes at regular intervals along their full length. Once made they can be basted into mockups allowing you to properly close them and not have to put buttonholes or something into every. single. mockup. You can also leave them laced together for the whole process, just moving them from mockup to mockup, which means a lot less labor in lacing and unlacing. These are really important for certain very fitted garments, especially garments that have negative ease like corsets, since you cannot just pin the mockup on. because it will not give you a true picture of final fit. In corsetry as well the tapes allow you to see the shape of the lacing gap at the back, which is important in final fit, and tells you where the reduction will be when you lace it tight.

Looking at the measurements on the pattern I needed a size 12 in the bust/waist, and a size 18 in the hips.... OUCH. Yes. I am pear shaped. They also suggested that you start with the larger size bust gores because it's easier to try to take it in than to let it out. Which is sage advice. So I traced of the size 18, with the d cup gores expecting to just have to take in significantly. around the waist/ribcage, carefully cut, and sewed together the mockup. Ideally corset mockups should be sewn from denim of canvas. I didn't have that sitting around, but had rather a lot of this very icky stiffly sized cotton, which worked in a pinch, although I had to be more careful with my fitting. You can see the lacing tapes in action here. They have been basted into the back so that where the edges meet in the back is even with the back of the mockup with the seam allowance folded over. I ended up having to make fairly significant alterations to the whole thing. The bust gores were far too large, even though I currently wear a 32 DD I ended up going with the next size down gores, and even taking those in a bit. I had to let the bottom of the hips out a little, and take the waist in a lot. I ran through two mockups to get the fit right, and had to have my mom come over and help me with the final fit of the back. It's just really hard to make more than very minor changes to the back of a garment by yourself. I took apart the final mockup and used it as my pattern.

The corset is made from one layer of imported cotton coutil, with a lining of silk. I chose to not follow the construction method in the laughing moon pattern, which calls for "sandwich" style channels sewn through outer layer and lining. This was partially because I didn't think the silk lining would hold up to the wear of the bones, and partially because I find that method adds bulk. And bulk in corsetry you want to avoid. Instead I used a period tecnique that is something like a flat felled seam. I got the idea looking at Augustintytar's amazing work. Anyone who has any interest in costuming will enjoy her work. It's absolutely incredible. Anyways, this is a period technique and as long as you don't overlap the seam allowances it makes a very flat seam which doubles as a boning casing. Brilliant. Now. Normally I would just sort of slap a seam like this together and go. But in corsetry any tiny mistake in fitting can lead to discomfort for the wearer, and in the worst case scenario, chafing. So, it pays to be extra careful.  Careful in this case means that I machine basted around all the pices at the seam line, and at the line where I would fold the seam allowance under. These basting lines were for marking purposes only.
Then I trimmed the seam allowances so that they would not overlap inside the seam, and clipped to the first line of stitching. I turned the edge over at the first line of stitching, and ironed it. It's important to be sure to turn it in the correct direction, so that all raw edges will be enclosed in the seam as shown above.

 That done, I very carefully hand basted the seam line together by lining up the interior line of machine basting. Now I could just top stitch on both sides without worrying about the fabric shifting on me.  I will add that this is one project where I almost wished for a thimble, as much as I despise them, because the coutil is so stiff and so dense. Use a very sharp needle, and expect to stab stitch rather than make running stitches.

Here's one piece on and the next ready to go on. You can see how the seam allownce on the peice that will be on the bottom is ironed forward, and the seam allowance on the piece that will go on the top is ironed back.

The only place this technique is not practical is over the bust gores, But since a boning channel does not need to run up each side of the gore, it's not neccesary for both sides to be treated in this manner. So I simply attached the gore to one piece, then fliped the seam allowances back, trimmed, and top stitched them. This allowed me to treat the other side as a continous seam for a boning channel.









The next step is to add the extra boning channels. Boning tape had been supplied in my kit for this purpose (although the instructions for the laughing moon pattern tell you to use the sandwich method.) I used the boning tape for individual channels, and pieces of leftover coutil for the three very closely spaced channels at either side of the bust gores. I felt that three pieces of boning tape sewn down edge to edge would be uneccesarily bulky. This is where I made the unfortunate discovery that although I had made the kit in the size it was ordered in, and although my corset is actually longer than the pattern, the bones were not the right length. Many of them were too long, while the side bones were a bit short. Because they came all pre capped and cut, and I don't have any boning caps hanging around in this size at the moment, there was nothing to do but pry the caps off, trim the bones to length, and put the caps back on. Which was probably more work than cutting and capping all of the boning myself. Thank god I have a pair of bolt cutters for cutting boning, and various tiny pliers.


Next I applied the waist tape, at the actual waistline (as determined by putting it on and bending back and forth to make wrinkles at the natural waist) and tacked it down in the existing lines of topstitching so it won't show from the outside.

First fitting! 

That just left the lining and finishing. Since I was not using the sandwich method, after I put the lining together I serged all the seams off as short as possible. This reduces bulk, and keeps them from fraying with wear in what will be a "floating" lining (not a concern with all fabrics but this silk was really prone to frayage) I did a final check on fit before I did any finishing, and while I could still make alterations without a lot of drama. I laced it up with some trepidation, I was afraid that for all my care with fitting and construction the fully boned corset wouldn't fit well, would look odd, or would otherwise have severe problems. I put it on and tightened it comfortably, so it felt snug but not super tight. I expected that it would be close to my natural waist measurement, since I was just sort of yanking it tight instead of lacing it up gradually over a quarter of an hour. Typically with comfortably tight lacing I get an outside measurement an inch or so less than my natural waist.  Imagine my shock when I found the lacing gap all but closed up, and my waist measurement showing an 6 inch reduction. without ever feeling squeezed at all! The fit was perfect, and the whole thing is so light and flexible. There is no pinching, no discomfort, and no unsightly "muffin top" at the top or bottom edges.

Since I am planning on wearing this frequently, which means that I will probably eventually need to alter it for a larger waist reduction, I chose not to do a standard binding. In order to alter it I will need to get at the inside, and taking the whole binding off will just make this even more painful. So I bound the coutil layer with a bias binding of black cotton, and then turned the lining in a quarter inch and basted it to the bias tape. This gives it a nice bound appearance but all I have to remove is one line of basting to get at the innards.

I flossed the whole corset with my favorite color of electric green, which shows up great on the black and looks shiney. In retrospect this was a terrible idea. Although I can do satin stitch and herringbone in my sleep, it's much different working them over boning, and my flossing is not to the standards I would like. And since it's in high contrast green on black, you can see every tiny mistake in neon clarity. Live and learn? Next time I will mark all of my flossing much better than I did this time. I also plan to make more tone on tone color choices until my flossing skills improve considerably. Finally I ran a narrow black ribbon through the front half of upper corset binding to tie in a bow and give a little draw in to the top of the cups. I would have preferred black beading lace but couldn't find any locally that I liked.

To me this whole experience has been not only an interesting and exciting expansion of my own sewing skills, but has really underlined the difference a custom corset makes. I have a decent quality off the rack uderbust corset. It's twice as heavy, much stiffer, and at the same comfort level I get a lot less reduction, plus, there's muffin topping everywhere if I really cinch it down. And I feel more constriction in my ribs when I wear it, even though it's underbust which many people prefer because it's less constricting around the ribs. I'm feeling much emboldened by my sucess with this corset, and planning on making the next one out of one of my books of orignal patterns instead of from a modern commercial pattern. I'm also considering attempting to improve the fit of my current underbust by adding hip gores. Not sure which one I'll get to first, but looking forward to continuing my corseting adventure!