Flying Solo

So I have made a corset with a pattern, its now time to attempt the next stage, make a corset starting from the very beginning, the bare measurements. I have plenty of books neatly stacked on my shelf detailing exactly how I should have gone about this, but in the heat of the moment enthusiasm took over and I pretty much decided to wing it. So after lots and lots of ruler and biro, I ended up with something that looked vaguely like a corset pattern.

I ploughed on, and made it up into a toile, which much to my surprise fitted my guinea pig (Flatmate Wethers) pretty well. As far as I could tell anyway, it closed at the back, was smooth over the front, and didn't seem to gape anywhere that I could tell.

I would even go as far as to say it had the essence of corset about it.

I sewed channels for the boning from the seam allowance, I left 1.5cm seam allowance, which wasn't really enough, I was sewing right at the edge for the channels to be wide enough. Next time I will leave 2cm.

I used artificial whale bone for most of it, though I didn't have quite enough, and had to improvise with large cable ties in two places. You can see in the picture that the channels second from the centre are slightly narrower than the others. I read about using cable ties in one of my corset books, and I have to say they worked really well. I don't think I would use them for anything that would be worn a lot, or was under a lot of pressure, but for something like this, especially a toile, they worked just fine. And at 99p for 10 long ones, its greatly more student budget friendly than steels.

With the boning in the bust bagged out a bit (see picture), I found that taking in the panel third from the centre by about 2cm, sorted this problem right out.