I shared my latest picture by
Threnody In Velvet yesterday to the FR/YWU Facebook page, and a few people there were interested in the construction of this corset.
I had a bit of a disaster a few days ago as my laptop died. I don't have as many images as I would like to share of this as a result.
Whilst the pictures are uploading from my phone, I am going to take the opportunity to announce that I am now running a Patreon. I have not launched fully yet, but there are levels from $1 to $60
For everyone that pledges there is a post that is a taster of some of the higher level pledges, including a PDF pattern for an underbust corset with a 33" underbust 22" waist and 38" hip. I have also added posts for the higher pledge levels, and there are currently 6 patterns in the group for pledges of $30 and up! If you are interested in supporting me,
please take a look at my page here.
My next few posts are already planned out, so there is plenty of content sorted for the next few months and I am already in the process of finishing an exciting set for the next photoshoot.
This is the kind of post I will be making about my work for the pledges of $20 and above. Due to losing everything on my old laptop, it's not quite as detailed as it would be and I won't be including this pattern here as it's one I have planned to release for Patrons in a couple of months.
Shameless self promotion aside...
The pattern for this is one I had already and knew fitted Patricia.
The fabric is a silk which my mom bought me from Nepal. I know a lot of you were probably expecting a very labor intensive process of piecing together strips, and it's not quite that elaborate but it was still a challenge. The black stripes are actually woven in, it's not a print, and those are a slightly denser weave to the rest of the silk, which has an almost "crushed" effect.
Cutting the fabric out was really daunting, and rather than cutting it out on the fold I cut each panel, one at a time. Both sides of the fabric looked very similar but they were not so it was important that I cut everything out perfectly, and the stripes actually did not repeat anywhere so I had to make sure I didn't make any mistakes and leave myself with too little fabric.
I found the combination of stripes I liked the best, which meant two narrower ones wrapping around the waist, and laid the first panel down using one of the lines to determine grainline. The wonderful thing about the fabric is that the black lines acted as balance points, and so I made sure the same line was lined up with the waist on both sides and knew it was on the right grain. I cut the panel out.
Then I laid out the next pattern piece, laid the first next to it to make sure all the lines met up (I don't know what I would have done if they didn't!) and cut out the second panel. I did this for all the panels on one side.
I'm sorry I don't have a better picture of this stage.
After this I flipped the panels over, and laid them each on top of the fabric lining up all the black lines, so that I had an exact mirror image. This seemed like it would be more accurate than just flipping the paper pattern.
The corset is one layer of this silk, and one of coutil. They are fused together using
Odif Temporary Fabric Adhesive which I got from Stoff og Stil in Oslo. The link I've given is to their USA website and the can has about 5 different languages so I assume it's not too hard to get hold of. It was also inexpensive, which in Norway is quite a rarity so it's probably a bargain in other countries.
This spray s the best I have ever used for mounting fabric. The fact it is temporary means it doesn't turn the fabric stiff like cardboard. It just gently sticks the fabric down, you can peel it off and re-position it when you inevitable make a slight mistake laying it in place, and it doesn't make a huge mess.
This silk was slippery, and the lines would have made any slipping very pronounced so mounting the fabric was the only viable option for this project.
The corset has simple home made channels on the inside, which are made from strips of coutil.
The cups are just lingerie foam - I make them the way without seam allowances and with a zigzag stitch. I sewed an underwire casing in place to cover the seam. The cups aren't lined and the rest of the corset is so well done that I really regret not taking the extra 2 minutes that would have taken.
There's just one bone per seam, sewn over the seam rather than to the side. Normally I'd do a minimum of two per seam, plus one down the middle of wider panels but I was in a rush to finish this as my friend had made a headdress to match and was waiting on me to get this done for the pictures.
The embellishment is a mix of two couture laces by Solstiss. The red one was given to me by Karolina Laskowska. The gold one was from a lace agent in London. I have a lot of this one, because I had a custom order of my La Sylphide corset ad had to buy a full bolt, so if you follow my work you will probably have noticed a LOT of gold lace in my fast few projects.
The pearls are freshwater and were from Stoff og Stil, I chose some in a really beautiful colour that I thought accented the corset.
Before I finalized the laces I was using I tried out a few things by placing them on the corset to see how they went.
It was all sewn by hand, and I made the binding from black coutil and sewed that by hand - I made it to be the same width as the black stripes to keep up the effect the fabric gave.
If you have any other questions let me know!
