Saturday, February 18, 2012

Pirate Wedding - Corset/Bodice RAGE

Okay. Okay. I had a meltdown last Monday about the corset binding and the costume and everything.

I had the corset channels sewed and boned, and was halfway through binding the first half of the corset. It was going really well. I was backstitching the binding to the front of the corset:


And whip stitching it to the back:





I was sailing through it and feeling so confident. I didn't even care that my whip stitches looked like crap, because they were on the inside of the corset where no one would see them, and the inside of the corset looks terrible anyway.


Then I started binding the lower part of the corset. Where the bones get really close to the edge. I started having problems. I cut some of the bones shorter. I still had problems.

See, I was sewing the binding through all three layers of fabric. I wanted to keep doing that, but I realized that I was going to just have to sew it on the layer of fabric just above the bones. So I shrugged my shoulders and got on with it, but then I poked myself really hard with the needle and bled on the binding, and the @#$%ing stitches were showing on the outside of the corset where I was backstitching the binding and suddenly I was just OMG WTF WHYYYY???

If you click on it, you can see the stitches.

So in a complete rage, I gathered up the corset pieces and the skirts I had made and threw them all in the garage.

After a few days, I calmed down enough to look for another corset pattern. I decided on the late 18th-century half-boned stays and found a free pattern on Ralph Pink's website (it's corset 5 in the package of 5 corsets). I chose this one for many reasons:

1. It's gorgeous.
2. Jo of Bridges on the Body did this corset already and has lots of good instructions.
3. It's a popular style and the free pattern is identical to the one Jo and many other costumers have used, and is very historically accurate.

So next post, the half-boned stays.


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