rescue corset finished
Hello everyone,
I thought i'd post about a disaster story made good... Apologies in advance for fuzziness of pics, they were all taken on my phone. (x posted to my own journal).
So, I arranged a 'swap' with an artist friend of mine. She would paint a picture of my shoes, and I would make her a corset. She fell in love with some fabric in my stash which ofcourse, I only had 1m left of. I offered to cut her a special pattern, but she liked the shape of a Silverado dore corset we'd tried on her, so I made the corset from that pattern - a pattern i'd used many times and as we were the same size apart from the bust, most of the alterations i'd made for me, were good for her too.
I followed the free pattern matching tutorial at Foundations Revealed to match the patterns at CF and CB perfectly.
I constructed the corset with the outer layer of quilting weight cotton, flatlined to some canvas duck, with herringbone coutil as the lining, in the 'enclosed welt seam' method whereby the outer corset and lining are sewn together in one go section by section and the bone channels are in the seams. I added a beautiful floating lining of spot broche shirting fabric. Lovely and soft. It was the BEST corset I had made to date. Nice and smooth, nice and curvy ...
The day came when it was finished and my friend came round excitedly to try it on ... DISASTER!!!! The corset look horrendous!! It didn't fit - too small, it protruded over the tummy in a very ugly way, and no matter how much we tweaked and pulled and pushed and tucked, it still looked hideous ... such disappointment. A combination of things had gone wrong, all of which i'm still not entirely sure of as the pattern had worked perfectly well in the past.
As I had none of the flowery fabric left, I decided to cut her a new pattern from scratch and make it up in red silk with black dots. We did a toile, it all fit, better curves, she was happy, corset done and fits perfectly ...
However, at the time of the disaster, which I posted here, I received a few suggestions on how to rescue it. I followed some advice given bysparklewren. She basically advised me to try to save the front and back panels, and cut a new pattern around them.
I'm sure I don't have to tell fellow corset makers how much it physically hurts to take a pair of scissors to your own work ... but I had to ...
I cut a new pattern around the CF and CB pieces, then reconstructed the corset using two layers and the same enclosed seam method - black satin coutil on the outside, herringbone coutil on the inside. It looked a bit 'flat' until I added the external bone channels, also made from black satin coutil. Here it is ...
The ironic thing is, that now my friend has both corsets, she likes the 'rescue' corset best even though the silk corset is actually far superior in build and appearance. Ah well. Here's the painting she did for me...
see more of her work here: http://www.picturedreams.co.uk/
I thought i'd post about a disaster story made good... Apologies in advance for fuzziness of pics, they were all taken on my phone. (x posted to my own journal).
So, I arranged a 'swap' with an artist friend of mine. She would paint a picture of my shoes, and I would make her a corset. She fell in love with some fabric in my stash which ofcourse, I only had 1m left of. I offered to cut her a special pattern, but she liked the shape of a Silverado dore corset we'd tried on her, so I made the corset from that pattern - a pattern i'd used many times and as we were the same size apart from the bust, most of the alterations i'd made for me, were good for her too.
I followed the free pattern matching tutorial at Foundations Revealed to match the patterns at CF and CB perfectly.
I constructed the corset with the outer layer of quilting weight cotton, flatlined to some canvas duck, with herringbone coutil as the lining, in the 'enclosed welt seam' method whereby the outer corset and lining are sewn together in one go section by section and the bone channels are in the seams. I added a beautiful floating lining of spot broche shirting fabric. Lovely and soft. It was the BEST corset I had made to date. Nice and smooth, nice and curvy ...
The day came when it was finished and my friend came round excitedly to try it on ... DISASTER!!!! The corset look horrendous!! It didn't fit - too small, it protruded over the tummy in a very ugly way, and no matter how much we tweaked and pulled and pushed and tucked, it still looked hideous ... such disappointment. A combination of things had gone wrong, all of which i'm still not entirely sure of as the pattern had worked perfectly well in the past.
As I had none of the flowery fabric left, I decided to cut her a new pattern from scratch and make it up in red silk with black dots. We did a toile, it all fit, better curves, she was happy, corset done and fits perfectly ...
However, at the time of the disaster, which I posted here, I received a few suggestions on how to rescue it. I followed some advice given bysparklewren. She basically advised me to try to save the front and back panels, and cut a new pattern around them.
I'm sure I don't have to tell fellow corset makers how much it physically hurts to take a pair of scissors to your own work ... but I had to ...
I cut a new pattern around the CF and CB pieces, then reconstructed the corset using two layers and the same enclosed seam method - black satin coutil on the outside, herringbone coutil on the inside. It looked a bit 'flat' until I added the external bone channels, also made from black satin coutil. Here it is ...
The ironic thing is, that now my friend has both corsets, she likes the 'rescue' corset best even though the silk corset is actually far superior in build and appearance. Ah well. Here's the painting she did for me...
see more of her work here: http://www.picturedreams.co.uk/