Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Working on the good copy of the corset
It was akin to doing a logic puzzle. Brenda & I had made the necessary adjustments to the corset pattern and spent a good deal of time trying to fit all of the pieces onto the piece of coutil that we'd dyed. Once we got it cut out, it was time to start sewing things together.
We put an order in to Farthingale's for some spiral steel bones and a busk. You can see the busk in the image below:
Labels: corset, costume, design, steampunk
Posted by Dre at 10:23 AM
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Thursday, May 12, 2011
Dyeing the Coutil
Coutil is a heavy & very tightly woven cotton that is used for making corsets. It's fairly expensive, so Brenda suggested that she had a piece that we could use. Unfortunately it was white, and that would not suit the Steampunk costume at all. We picked up some black fabris dye and wound up with a lovely warm brownish gray...
Labels: corset, costume, design, dye, steampunk
Posted by Dre at 10:14 AM
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Thursday, May 05, 2011
The fit of the corset
Well our mockup has been very handy. By making it and trying it on, we have realized that we need to really re-work some of the pattern. We're going to make the waist area smaller, and we'll need to increase the room and height in the bust cups.
Labels: corset, costume, design, steampunk
Posted by Dre at 10:07 PM
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Thursday, April 28, 2011
Back to the Steampunk Costume
Last year, Brenda & I came up with a plan for an original Steampunk costume. We got started on the project, and then we both got very busy with other things, and the project was shelved for a while. We have taken it back on and our hopes are to comeplete it for Halloween this year.
We took a basic 19th Century corset design and reworked it so that it would fit properly. We created our own pattern out of a thick brown paper (like the kind used for wrapping parcels) and then pulled out some inexpensive cottom so that we could make a mockup. We'd need this so that we can test the fit. Corsets have to be pretty spot-on if you want a good fit...
It's a real treat using the industrial sewing machine. It takes a little bit of getting used to and you have to be very careful when using it because it's rpetty powerful...
We sound up sewing channels for the boning with twill tape. Our plan for the actual corset was to cut the fabric a little wider and use the fabric itself to create the boning channels.
Labels: corset, costume, design, steampunk
Posted by Dre at 9:25 AM
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