Half-Boned Stays

So I'm on Project 4, which is really an extension of Project 3. Yet I've only finished one whole project (Project 1). Maybe I should rename my blog "Look What I Started To Make And Then Threw Into the Garage In A Fit Of Rage." Although I did complete two skirts for Project 3, neither of which I'm going to use for my pirate wedding costume after all. But... They'll be useful for ren fests. The costume is just not coming together like I had hoped it would.

Here are my pattern pieces. This pattern is already sized up to fit a size 8-10, so I didn't have to ask my graphics friend to resize it.

I'm going to get to work on the mockup. I can't figure out where the waistline is from the pattern pieces, so I'll sew the mockup first and then work on fitting it later, skipping the slash & spread step.

Two hours later, I finished the mockup, put on the lacing strips, laced it up, tried it on, started feeling ragey, looked at the clock and wished it was later so I could start drinking vodka, took it off and resisted throwing it in the garage with the rest of my failed projects.

The lacing strips that I made for the 1911 corset that I stopped working on so I could work on my @#$%ing pirate costume are too big to attach to the back without sewing over the seam connecting the side back piece to the center back piece. Sigh. This is just so frustrating.

So I pinned the lacing strips on with giant quilting safety pins, but then had to unpin half of them to lace them up. The corset fits bizarrely, but it's really hard to tell because I think I'm really going to have to put boning in at least on the front panel, because otherwise I just can't tell at all how it needs to be taken in/let out. So I need to cut out a second piece of the front panel, pick out the seams of the two side front panels, and sew it back together with the boning channel layer.

Also, my boobs are starting to sag, which was horribly obvious in my unboned mockup. I've always had beautiful breasts and now at the great age of 39, they are starting to sag. I just feel miserable about everything right now and think I need to walk away from this project for a few hours and get out of the house.

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.