I'l be back, but not for a while

I'm off on a volunteer trip to Ghana to teach English for the next 7 weeks, so until then its bye-de-bye blog-land until my return.

...with flowers in my hair

Lots of silk flowers, hot glue and felt. A lovely few hours playing with glitter glue like primary school.

Tale of the Mad Hatter

The latest Custom Costume Company project is a hat, something we have not attempted before. It is of the cute miniature kind, the kind that perches on neatly arranged hair, and assists the look; rather that squashing the do flat and providing the wearer with the oh so dreaded "hat hair".

Lots of layering is involved, buckram for stability, felt for padding, silk for decoration. This means lots of sewing (although admittedly not as much as a full sized hat) through lots of layers, thankfully this part wan't my job. I could tell how tough the work was by the pinkness of the fingertips and the pile of bent and broken needles.

Now came my bit, sewing on the bias binding. The circumference of a circle is deceptively long.

After adding the elastic (to aid with delicate head perching) I pinned in the lining.

Beads and silk flowers at the front and feathers at the back were the final touch. I learned the hard way that it is definitely not the best idea to bend up the brim and fix it in place before adding the beads. I had to use a needle so curved it was almost a complete circle in order to stitch these on.

Tutorial: Modesty Panel

The modesty panel is the rectangle of fabric that goes in the space behind the lacing on a corset. It is much neater than skin when you aren't wearing anything underneath the corset.

The size of the rectangle is the width of the gap in the lacing plus about 2", by the height that will look right, this varies corset to corset depending on the style, so its a matter of personal choice. Cut this out on the fold of your corset fabric, plus seam allowances.

Then cut out the same again from a lining fabric, I used black cotton.

Put both fabric pieces together, fold so the lining is on the outside, and pin.

Sew around the edge leaving a 2" gap for turning.

Snip the corners.

Turn the right way out and press.

Sew around the edge of all four sides.

Pin the long side of your rectangle to on side of the corset. I have slide mine under the bias binding because there is a gap, but if this is not the case it doesn't matter.

Stitch down with small neat stitches. If the modesty panel is probably going to be removed the just tack it..

Remove the pins.

Iron the panel in the direction it will lie, over the eyelets.

Finished, now it is ready to lace and wear.

And fin

Flatmate-Weathers' corset is finished, bound and eyeletted, with the exception of a modesty panel and a bag to put it in which will come later. I will take some much better photos when i have daylight, time and an appropriate length of corset lace.

Positives: Colours and fabrics work very nicely together, embroidery on the front panel lies smooth and flat, not too much puckering, neat bias binding, slimming effect from colours, good length.

Negatives: Strange thing going on around the bust channels - not quite sure what that is, slightly too high under the arms - its wearable but should be no higher than the top of the bra strap, there is some bagging on the lining - caused by using stretchy denim and the method of construction. This could be improved by pulling the extra fabric in each panel over their straightest neighbouring channel and tacking.