I'd been wanting to make myself a new corset for a while,
having only one currently, and it was the strapless untabbed version from Drea's
generator.
It's served me well for a number of years, but I found myself wanting 'more'
from my corset and decided I needed to get off my rear and make myself an
entirely different one with straps, tabs, and front lacing.
I tried using the drafting instructions for creating my own effigy, but I'm so
very not math inclined, and my first draft came out extremely wrong in so many
ways it would have been entertaining had I not been so frustrated. I had
myself a rather glorious temper tantrum over the whole affair, and then a
brainstorm. If my current corset fits, why not use it as a template for the
effigy? After tracing the outline of my old corset to paper (and merrily abusing
my dummy in the process), I added a few lines for straps and tabs, and cut the
new toile.
Much better. Insert another slight tantrum, as my dummy just isn't squishy
enough to viably work with..
After staring at it on her for a day, I realized it looked.. off. Something was
nagging at me, and it took me a moment to realize I should compare the new
corset's neckline and straps to an existing 'anything' that would be worn over
it. Sure enough, my current version would have stuck out like a sore thumb from
being too high in the back, and too wide in the straps, which would have driven
me (more) batty every time I wore it.. So, per my usual method, I drew all over
it.
When I had done the paper version, I couldn't for the life of me figure out
where to put the side back seam, so both my toile and the final fabric do not
have one (but the toile at least has the line now!). I had cut the final once I
knew I'd gotten the fit right, and was transferring all alterations on the toile
to the 'working' version. I guess I'm just weird like that. When cutting
everything, I was well aware that choosing not to put that seam in could make
things.. interesting in the front. It causes the back to be on the straight of
grain, with the straps on the bias, but the center front to be approximately
35ish degrees off grain. Not quite a bias front, but close enough that it might
cause more temper tantrums, and if I was bustier it probably would have ended up
on the true bias. But, I'm what I consider relatively unskilled, fabric
properties ignorant, and I just like doing things outside the box, so the idea
of off grain/bias corsetry doesn't scare me as much as it probably should. The
final is what I can only guess to be a cotton linen blend that's been in my
stash for years. It's cool to the touch like linen, likes to wrinkle like mad
when a fistful is grabbed, but does not retain those wrinkles terribly like
linen.
After dealing with all my adjustments and such, I heavily debated my boning
choices. I could go the plastic cable ties way, and be able to chuck it in the
washing machine at will, or the reeds way, and deal with the fragility issues of
a natural material. I hemmed and hawed quite a lot, took a trip to our local
Home Depot, checked out straw brooms (they suck!!!) and the ties. Now, the funny
thing for me is that six months ago, I would have not even considered reed/broom
straw boning, but I found myself shying away from plastic. It was more expensive
in my mind, for one, but also the whole 'can it breathe?' question has become
much more important to me lately. After rejecting the poor quality brooms that
Home Depot had to offer, and slating the ties for the last ditch desperation
choice, we checked out a few more stores and I searched high and low for real
reeds as well.. But to no avail. I'd finally settled on the brooms that Wal-Mart
offers in their hardware section, but was still not *happy* with my choice. The
hubby was due to pick them up for me that following Friday, and I got an amazing
stroke of luck. The day he was to go get them for me, Kass
announced that she was now carrying a whole assortment of new goodies, including
reeds! Happy day!! I promptly snuggled him into submission and ordered a
roll of 1mm reeds.
Once I'd finally decided on what stiffener to use and ordered it, I ran channels
with my machine using the foot as a guide on spacing, keeping them in line so
that they ran vertically from the middle points.
The channel size ended up being roughly 1/4", and there are a total of 75
channels, with a gap under the arms where there are none at all. Having sewn in
all the channels, I just had to lace myself into it and see how it looked. I
used cheap satin ribbon and a small carpet needle to get myself into it, because
I wasn't ready to do the eyelets, I'm incredibly lazy, don't have any lacing
strips, and I just wing pretty much anything I do.
It still fit! I carefully ignored the wonky wrinkles, reminding myself
that those would smooth out once the reeds were installed and the tabs freed.
The next day, panic set in while I awaited the arrival of my reeds. "Why
did I choose reeds??? Why didn't I go with something simpler?? I've never done
this before.. I'm just a beginner and I'm going to screw up!"
When my reeds did arrive, I'd gotten over my initial panic, and reminded myself
that when I started out on this project I'd expected to mangle it. This
is supposed to be my learning experience so that the "real" one comes
out right and proper.
The only pic I managed to snap during the actual process of inserting the reeds
was of my cat eyeing them, and debating just how badly he wanted to tempt fate
by trying to see if they were something fun to play with..
I've got to say.. Reeds are AWESOME to work with. I honestly expected the oops
monster to jump out and bite off my hand, but they went in so smoothly it was
scary. I decided that to start with I'd go with 10 reeds per channel as an easy
number to remember, and slipped them in 5 at a time. The whole process took
about 3 hours from start to finish.
Once I had them all in I grabbed the carpet needle and ribbon, and laced myself back in. I
adjusted the front point, as I figured from the advice of others it might need to be shortened, but I wanted
to have the reeds in place to know exactly where I would be comfortable with the
point ending.
By the time those shots were taken, I'd pranced around in it for an hour or so,
and it was incredibly comfortable after the first 5 minutes. I was
finding myself more and more happy with something I'd expected to swear at
non-stop. After taking it off, I cleaned up all the reeds that needed extra
trimming and packed it up for a couple days. Silly me hadn't thought about what
I would use as binding.
When I was ready to work on it again, I went through my stash of junk and found
a couple matching packages of off-white double fold bias tape. I called it good
enough for this version, and then sat down to decide just how to attach it to
the corset. My lazy experimental half won the argument on how to attach the
outside half, and I tempted fate with my sewing machine. I came out of the deal
absolutely stunned, as my machine Hates Everything, yet dealt with the reeds
without a single problem. I did decide that I would be 'good' and attach it so
that when it's flipped around to the inside, it wouldn't show that I had used my
machine.
Attached, flipped, and pinned within an inch of it's life:
When I had that done and ready, another internal war ensued over how to finish
the binding. The lazy half was all for using the machine, citing the fact that
said machine *liked* the reeds. The obsessive half screamed that it was an
unforgivable cheat, especially since even the lazy half made sure that it
wouldn't look like the machine had attached the outer half, and using the
machine now would just completely undo and ruin that careful disguise.
So, after a full day of the two sides battling it out, the obsessive half won. I
spent 6 hours on Sunday, and another 10 hours on Labor Day attaching the inner
half by hand.
Since this was experimental, and things were turning out so
very well, I decided I might as well try doing hand-bound eyelets too. On the
10th I did 6 eyelets, the 11th was only 2 though, as I just couldn't concentrate
on them. On the 12th I made up for the previous day's laziness and did 16 more.
The 13th was 9 more eyelets, and the 14th was the final 18. By the third day I
found that I was considerably faster, taking 10 minutes per eyelet versus the 20
minutes per on the first two days. On further thought, I have also
realized that the hand-bound eyelets are significantly faster than my normal
method of using the cheap metal eyelets and overcasting those.
After finishing the last eyelet, I promptly laced myself in for the first day of
a three day trial on comfort/stability/all that good stuff. At the time the pics
were taken, I'd been wearing it for 2 hours.
One thing I noticed when I laced myself in is that somehow I managed to put in
one more eyelet than I actually needed.. Apparently, silly me forgot how to
count again. The only other thing I'm technically not happy with is that my
machine had an argument with the thread in a few spots while I was running the
channels, and I could have been a little neater with my machine stitching in
general, but I can deal with it. I'll just grumble about it now and then.
Day one of my trial wear I only managed 6 hours, as my posture
is absolutely horrid by default and I'd spent a goodly amount of time that day
slouching over the last group of eyelets, so my lower back objected quite
strongly to being in the proper position. Day two I wore it for a straight
11 hours while performing all normal daily activities; cooking, eating, cleaning
house, etc. with not a single problem. Day three, I chose to only wear it
for 3 hours, as I'd pretty much managed to form my final opinions by then.
For
myself, I am absolutely in love with reed stiffening. The first five
minutes or so the corset is a bit tight, but after that, they've shifted into a
flatter position that's really quite comfortable. There were quite a few
moments where my wearing it completely slipped my mind, which I cannot say about
any of my previous tries. On the second day I did notice that the tabs and
breast areas do start to develop a bit of memory, but not in a way that I could
currently consider a bad thing, as by the next morning most of the curves had
begun to straighten back out. I suspect that after a year of regular use,
it will have completely formed to my corseted shape.
Considering that this was one experiment after another, I
really didn't expect it to come out well.. Or even usable when it came down to
it. I have found myself rather pleasantly surprised and extremely pleased.
The off-grain center front has not caused any problems during wear, but that may
be because of the fact that I am not well endowed, so another experimental
corset is in the works to test the one piece construction as well as how the
reeds will work for someone more busty than myself.
Grand total of time involved in construction from patterning
to the final eyelet comes to 32.5 hours.
