This is the second part of a two-part article on T.S.Gilbert's 1873 corset patent #141134. In part one of this series I covered the details contained in this beautiful Victorian patent's written texts; I also covered sizing up the pattern, the toile process and the fittings. Now, in this second part, I will cover the making-up of the corset in my chosen fashion fabric. I am going to follow the patent advice and make a two-layer corset, but I am adding a floating lining to mine as I prefer corsets with this feature. Figure 1 shows the patent's line drawing of how the finished corset should look; figure 2 shows the back view.

I am making my corset from an off-white silk dupioni, my strength layer will be a white herringbone coutil and my floating lining will be plain off white cotton. The corset will also consist of six sprung steel bones, four at the centre back, with one either side of the eyelets (grommets) and one on either side of the busk at the centre front. Twenty-two spiral steel bones will be spaced through out the rest of the panels, thirty-eight two-part eyelets down the centre back and one six-loop busk will act as my front closure.

Before starting to cut my pieces out, I ironed interfacing on to the back of my silk to strengthen and stiffen it - which should help prevent wrinkling in the finished corset. I then cut out two of each panel (one for each side) in silk and in coutil, plus two more additional centre front and centre back panels in silk as a facing for my floating lining. After that I cut out two of panels 2, 3, 4 and 5 from my plain cotton to make up the rest of the floating lining. Figure 3 shows my pattern pieces laid out on my silk.

My next step was to make up my two centre front panels. I started with my right side; this is the side the loops of the busk go into. I took two of my silk front panels and placed them right sides together and then placed them on top of one of my coutil pieces. I then drew in my seam line along the centre front and placed my busk along side the line, and then marked the gaps for my loops as shown in figure 4.

Next I stitched along the seam line, leaving gaps where the loops sit so that they can slot through when I turn it out. The red line in figure 5 represents my stitching line and the blue lines are representative of where the busk loops' edges sat.

My next step was to trim my seam allowance, and then turn my fabric right sides out and press it with my iron. I then placed my busk inside with the loops through the holes and pinned all the way around the edge of the busk to hold it in place. Then using a zipper foot to enable me to stitch really close to the busk, I stitched all the way around the edge and removed my pins.

Following this, I took the left side panels, placed the two silk pieces right sides together and the coutil on top, and stitched the centre front closed. Then I trimmed my seam allowance, turned it right sides out and pressed it with my iron. Finally, I placed my two centre front panels together and using the loops as markers, marked where my busk knobs needed to poke through on my left side piece. Taking my awl, I then made holes on my marked spots as in figure 6.

Next, I pushed the knobs of the left half of the busk through the holes and stitched close to the edge around the busk as I had previously done with the right side.

Finally, I stitched a 1cm wide channel down either side of my busk so that I can insert a steel bone there later on to strengthen the busk and help keep my centre front straight against my body. Now my centre front panels are finished, I am going to make my centre back panels...

I started off by again taking two of the silk panels and placing them right sides together on top of a piece of coutil and I then stitched them all together down the centre back seam; I did this for both sides. I then trimmed my seam allowance, turned them right sides out and pressed them with my iron. Next came the boning channels. I stitched one 1cm from the centre back edge for my first bone, then another 1.5cm from the first to leave a gap for my eyelets and finally one more, 1cm from the previous line, for another bone. I then repeated this onto the second back panel. This patent also has five spiral bones at an angle in the centre back panels, so I worked out their placement by looking at the patent diagrams and then used carbon paper and a tracing wheel to mark the lines onto my fabric - starting by marking the seam allowance and then doing five lines from this that followed along the line of the seam allowance. Next, I stitched these lines in and once again repeated the process on the second panel. See figure 8 and 9 to see my finished back panels with all of the boning channels stitched in.

Now that I have my front and back panels completed, I am going to go through all of the other panels and use my carbon paper and tracing wheel to carefully mark the channel placement and then I will stitch them all in before I attach the panels together. This is because - as I found out when making my toile - it's quite hard to get the channels straight when you're stitching them into a fully made-up corset. Figure 10 shows a carbon paper printed line on one of my panels and figure 11 shows all channels stitched into all the panels for one half of the corset.

Now that all of my panels for both halves of the corset have all the channels stitched into them they are ready to be attached together. I am going to roll pin my panels as I do this to try to avoid any wrinkling in my finished corset. I will stitch my panels together from the centre front, moving towards the centre back with each added panel. As I do this I need to make sure I don’t catch my silk facings on my centre front and centre back into my seams as I will need these to attach my lining to. Figure 12 shows the outside of the corset with all panels stitched together. Figure 13 shows the inside of the corset at the same point. I then trimmed my seams down and pressed them.

Now that the main body of the corset is finished, I am going to make my floating lining. I first pinned, and then stitched, the whole middle section of panels together. Next, I attached the lining to the silk facings with the corset inside out and then turned it through the right way, once both sides of the lining were attached. Figure 14 shows the lining pieces pinned together.

With my lining in place I finally measured each channel to figure out what length my bones needed to be cut to. I then cut, tipped and inserted each bone into its channel. Figure 15 shows my cutting and tipping tools.

My next step was cutting out my bias strips and ironing them into binding, for this I needed four strips 3.5cm wide and at least 50cm long. I then ironed them as I passed them through my tape-maker. After this, I pinned one side of the binding to the top edge and right side of my corset and then machined it down, I then repeated this on the bottom edge, right side of my corset and the same on the other half of the corset (Here when I say right, I mean 'right and wrong', not 'right and left'). Figure 16 shows my finished bias strips. Figure 17 shows me pinning the binding to the edge of the corset and figure 18 shows me machine-stitching the binding in place.

At this point I moved on and cut the holes for my eyelets (grommets), and then I inserted them all. Figure 19 shows the holes. Figure 20 is the inside, or backs, of the eyelets, and figure 21 is the outside of the corset and the front of the eyelets.

And finally, I pinned all of my binding over to the inside of the corset and hand stitched it down for a nice, neat finish.

With the corset finished I could finally try it on again, a moment I had been looking forward to since the last fitting of the toile! And Ta-Da! Figure 23 front view. Figure 24 side view. Figure 25 back view.

I am very happy with the way this corset has turned out, I love the shaping that it gives me and although there are a few bits that don’t fit perfectly I think they will improve significantly when the corset has been seasoned properly and has moulded to my body a little better.

If I were to make this corset again I would only make a couple of changes; the first one being the way I fitted the bust. On my toile, most of the excess fabric seemed to fall on the front seam (between panels one and two). Now on my finished corset the front seam does not quite sit right - although it would probably be unnoticeable to most people, it just feels wrong to me, so I would take less out of the front seam and then remove the excess from the seam between panels 3 and 4. The only other change I would make is to the top edge line, as I am not keen on the straight top edge and would prefer a sweet heart line instead, but that is just personal preference and has nothing to do with the patent itself.

Other than those two changes, I am happy with the corsets fit and shaping. I will definitely use my experiences of working on this patent in my future corset experiments; I love the different seam lines and will try moving seams more on future patterns because of this corset. I also adore the shaping that this corset gives me, and while the reduction isn’t massive it makes it look a lot more dramatic by emphasizing the hip spring - another thing I will definitely incorporate into my future patterning!

I am so glad that I had the opportunity to work on this patent and I think I will take a lot away from the experience and my future corsets and patterning will benefit from my having done this. I will also be looking into doing more patents. I think there is so much to be learnt from looking at historical patterns and corsets. So much has been lost over the years, people attempt to upgrade and improve on things, but through this I think there is a mine of gold that can be lost through one person's view of ‘improvement’. I think there is so much that can be gained from looking back and revisiting old methods, deciding on whether they actually need improving, or even making our own improvements that we would never have thought of had we not looked back to the old methods and patterns. Revisiting old methods and conducting our own personal experiments, changing things here and there just to see what effect it gives us, is an amazing way to learn; you get a deeper understanding of how each part of the corset works together to create the shape and the strength. One thing I will definitely be taking away from this patent challenge is not to get too stuck on one method, one pattern or one way of doing something, I will change things, even if its just one small change per corset. I want to see the effects that such changes can have on the corset and the way it works. Through these experiments I hope my skills will grow even more and enable me to know simply and quickly how to fix imperfections and make a corset do what ever I can dream up. Master Corsetieres don’t learn their skills just through reading how to do things one way. They try things, make mistakes and they learn from them. They challenge themselves to try new techniques and always strive for improvement. You don’t get better by staying safe and sticking to the same old way of doing things!

“Skillful discovery. Rather than being attached to a particular outcome, which we have limited control over, I’ve found it’s better to focus on becoming an expert discoverer and mastering the process of experimentation. Because you have complete control over what you observe and what you make of it, you are guaranteed success. Fortunately, there’s always room to develop your investigatory skills.”

- Matthew Cornell, quantifiedself.com

I hope my articles on this corset patent have helped some of you to grow ideas and inspirations for your own corset journeys - just as much as it has helped me to grow mine. If any of you try this patent for yourselves then I would love to see your results and hear about the parts that you found challenging.