Wollaton Corset Toile

So four hours, one vanilla yogurt, and several pin-pricks later, here is the first fitting of the toile. I’m pretty pleased with it as a first go considering all the alterations I made. I don’t have the right busk yet, at the moment all I have in there are two together which are too short and too thin, so not the best guide.

The only major alteration was that the straps needed shortening, I’d predicted this because it was the only area of the pattern I didn’t alter. From the research I have done, the corsets were almost entirely single spiral laced, I’ve never done that before, but it was a pleasure to only have to do half the number of eyelets.

It is bagging out around the waist, I’m not sure quite how to solve this. The real thing will be made of stronger fabric than calico, so maybe that will help. But I might try shaping the waist a bit more.

It did not feel like making a corset at all to do this, what with the sleeves and the lack of bones, only four in the entire thing.

I’m hoping the wrinkling here at the front will be solved with the right busk, also I need to remember to do fittings with a braless model, I’m sure there was a sneaky bit of padding going on here.

Making a physical start

For my Wollaton Hall project I am starting with the ladies outfit, I have much more experience with female clothing than male, so I thought I would get this out of the way before tackling the footman costume.

I’m working from the base up, so corset is the first port of call. I can’t find the book I made this sketch from, but this is what I’m aiming for. My model is naturally slim, so she doesn’t need much in the way of support.

I borrowed this pattern (the short corset in the middle oval) as a starting point. I had to change it quite a lot, my corset is to open at the back not the front, come down to hip level not under-bust, and include a front busk. Also this pattern does not go smaller than a UK size 14, and my model is an 8.

Here is my version part way through, since this I split piece 5 into two with most of the angling for the hip going between the two new pieces, the angle on the far right in this version looked far too harsh.

Corset Time

Seen as I have already made corsets, I left this part until the end because I knew roughly how lng it would take. I did allow a little extra time however, because there were bust gores and feather embroideries to do.

I wanted the feathers to be peeping out from the edges of the gores.

I used calico for the liner, aesthetically its not the best, but it had to be done for time and monetary purposes.

I decided to bone both sides of the panel seams, I really like the stitch lines.

I bias-bound the inner edges at the back and hand-stitched it down.

I made a slight mistake with the bias-binding around the bottom, machine stitched it to the inside rather than the outside. Never mind though, a little bit of unpicking solved that.

Just some flossing at the base of the gores to be done, I tried very hard to stop it from fraying, but the silk was just too delicate.

Putting it together

All those little pieces that I cut out and mounted are gradually coming together into one big piece. I had to wait for the busk to arrive in the post before I could start, and I eagerly got too it as soon as it did.

This is the most complicated corset I have attempted so far, it has some curves and shapes than I'm not used too, so I don't think I put it together in quite the order, or with the method, that I should. But I'm pretty pleased with it so far.

I got to use my boning channel tape because the bones don't sit on the seams like I'm used to. The inside is a bit patchwork, but I kind of like it.

I didn't get the gussety bit quite right, I didn't tuck the edge over far enough for it to be caught by the stitch line in a few places, so I invisible stitched it down.

The way the pattern is, whenever you have two pieces of fabric to join together, one piece will have a 1.5cm seam allowance, and the other piece will have a 0.5cm seam allowance. There must be a reason for this, maybe I should be boning the channels? But I just can't work out how it would work, so far I've been drawing in the seam allowance lines and carefully matching them up, but there has to be a better way to do it.

My first gusset

Today was about learning, I learnt one of the ways to take a pattern from an existing corset. Put it inside-out on a stand, and piece by piece lay paper of it and feel the edges, drawing and shuffling pins all the while. Its not particularly scientific, but it did work and was pretty simple, even with quite a curvy corset, I just had to be patient with it and keep checking. We tried using fabric to draw on first, but the stretch made it too inaccurate, a lack of tissue paper meant I actually used interfacing, unusual choice maybe, but it worked excellently.

Some of the pieces contained gussets - I've never made a corset with gussets before, they were actually pretty simple. When Denise had tinkered with the pattern to make it all neat and fitting, I cut the pieces out of courtil.

I stitched round the gusset slot (probably not the official name) with a large stitch, and used the stitch line as a guide to fold and press the raw edges under.

I then matched up the gusset, pinned it, and stitched it. Simples. Thanks to some wonderful pattern cutting it matched up perfectly.

I made the new pattern into a toile, and it worked really well. Its not fully boned, but the real thing is going to look lovely. It will be part of the costume that the wings are for.