I primarily make modern corsetry from self-drafted patterns, but I’ve always looked to the past for all sorts of inspiration. When I saw the patent challenge on the Facebook page for Foundations Revealed, I thought I’d give it a go and see what patterning inspiration I could get from the 19th century.

 

The Patent

Looking at this 1878 patent by Henry S Strauss, I thought the pattern diagram looked relatively straightforward, no strange diagonal pieces or tricky gores (See figs 1-7 of the patent), but when I turned to the diagram of the made up corset (See fig 8 of the patent), things became more interesting. Straight away I could see this was a piece heavily boned at the front, with a good amount of bust and hip curve – both features I like. Things were looking promising!

 

But what’s that going on in Fig 9? I peered at the images, then read the text and realised the ‘new idea’ of this patent was, essentially, using large external boning channels, which the text of the patent refers to as “auxiliary pieces” lettered a to f. All these channels are of equal width to fit three or four boning channels “as may be desired”, except for d, which is a shaped pattern piece, widening over the hips. These channels, according to the patent, are designed to give “an additional thickness of material […] to those parts […] of the corset where the strain is greatest” and d, specifically, “also serves as a protection or shield for the hips, upon which the outer garments may lie.”

Now, as I outlined at the start of this article, I’m not a historical costumer, but I can imagine the weight of many petticoats could become uncomfortable pressing on the hip, so the “shield” of pattern piece d might help protect the wearer or distribute the weight to some extent. It might even protect the corset beneath, the full boning on this area helping strengthen it, perhaps. It sounds like this is Strauss’s theory, at least, suggesting this is a design for practicality and regular wear.

 

Research & Inspiration

Once I’d worked out what the patent was trying to do and how it would be put together, I looked at extant corsets of this era. Although, I don’t tend to approach corsetry from a historical standpoint, I do look to historical corsetry for inspiration and drooling purposes! I wanted to get an idea of corsetry of the late 1870s/early 1880s to get an idea of shaping, largely, but also conventions in patterning and materials/design, to see what the patent might look like, how innovative it really was and to see if I could get some ideas for where to take the final piece.

I was excited when my search immediately showed up this corset dated circa 1878 from the Met Museum. This has long been a favourite of mine and I, in my head, have always referred to it as the ‘Storm’ corset, because of the gorgeous grey-blue silk that, to me, looks like a cloudy pattern. This piece appears to be heavily boned and features a number of gussets, as did many of the corsets I found from this era, including the one in the 1882 illustration shown. It’s quite curvy, with what I would call ‘smooth curves’ (as opposed to cupped rib and cupped hip, quite extreme looking curves seen in some modern corsets).

 

I also found a useful Pinterest board for 1870s and 1880s corsets, which reinforced the impression that a lot of corsets from this era seemed to make use of gussets at bust and hip and also often featured spoon busks, which makes sense, considering the curvy silhouette of the time. However, my patent shows a straight busk and you wouldn’t be able to use a spoon busk without some modification of the pattern, because of the small front panel, which is further overlapped by the external boning channel (piece a).

This brief research already had me wondering how curvy this corset would be, considering its lack of gussets or gores. However, a corset I’d seen some years ago online was a gorgeous example of an 1880s corset with beautiful contours and, to my eye, similar patterning – no gussets or gores, but shape given through front pieces that flare out elegantly at the top and side and back pieces that flare at the bottom to give a lovely hip curve.

Taking this corset as my inspiration also gave me the idea to see if I could come up with a magpie/bird flossing pattern and make this into a magpie corset (which might be slightly over-ambitious, since I’ve never done flossing before, but I’ve always tended to want to run before I could walk – walking’s so boring!). We’ll see how that goes!

But to get to that, we need a pattern first.

 

Patterning & Toile

I faffed for a while deciding how I would enlarge the patent diagram to something approaching a pattern and finally decided on the technique explained by Sandra Stuart in her Corset Pattern Scaling article here on Foundations Revealed. It’s a technique I’d wanted to try for a long time and this seemed like the ideal opportunity.

I prepared the pattern as outlined by Sandra, scaling pieces 1-7 up to match my measurements as much as possible, without distorting the proportions or basic shapes – I figured I could correct further at the toile stage.

I did hit a problem once I started to look more closely at the pattern – where on earth was the waistline meant to be? The narrowest parts of the pattern pieces and the closer set of eyelets seemed to align more closely to the underbust of the front pieces, which would make the lower half of the corset quite long. Possible reasons for this could be:

1. The pattern pieces aren’t correctly aligned on the diagram, so the back pieces should be lower down.
2. The bust starts flaring out from the waistline, which I understand was a feature of some eras of 19th century corsetry (or perhaps all? As I said, not my area of expertise!). Looking at the 3/4 photo of the black corset from Kent State University Museum, the bust shaping does seem to start from the waist.
3. This is just a diagram and not a pattern, so whoever drew it put the closer set of eyelets in wherever they fancied.

 

I figured I could spend ages worrying and wondering about it, faffing with alignment, trying to work out where the waist was on each piece and trying to get it to all align or I could do an approximate rescale to get a starting point and see how it went. Sewing the toile together might reveal that the pattern pieces weren’t aligned on the diagram or that the ‘pattern’ on the diagram was seriously flawed. Either way, I wouldn’t know until I moved forward!

 

As no diagrams are given for the external boning channels, I decided I would draw d on the toile, once it was fitted to give me the pattern piece. It was clear from the start that piece d would need to be a uniquely shaped piece.

Looking at the pattern, it seemed that a number of the boning channels in this piece would have some curve, so it would be logical to use spiral steels for their sideways flex, whereas historically baleen might have been cut to shape and used. On piece 6, the patent explains “a side steel may be inserted” – as this suggests it’s optional, I chose to leave it out of the initial toile, figuring I could add it in later if needed.

 

I printed and aligned the pattern pieces, as in Sandra Stuart’s article, cutting them out to form my initial pattern pieces for cutting.

 

Confession time – I’m too impatient to cut toiles in separate layers, so this was folded and cut from calico. I drew around my pattern pieces in orange Sharpie to make them clear for photos (normally I use a mechanical pencil with tailor’s chalk lead).

 

I wasn’t surprised when I started sewing the toile and found the pattern pieces didn’t match in length, though the shapes did come together nicely. It looked like someone had simply drawn a line across the top and bottom, without considering the lengths of the seam lines.

 

I had originally planned to use the top edge to align my pieces, but I suspected this wouldn’t work. I paused for a moment wondering if I should seek help or simply just put the thing in the corner and try to forget about it as I didn’t know what to do next, but instead I decided to try an intuitive solution and see how it went. I aligned each seam’s pattern pieces according to the most important curve, so between pieces 2 and 3, I put the bust curves together so they matched, then pinned the rest of the seam; moving towards the sides of corset, the hip curves became more important, so I aligned those curves to help me decide where to match the pieces.

As you can see in the below image, if I had stuck to matching pieces by the top edge, I would have ended up having to sew together some quite strange combinations of curves, which would not have matched together, potentially giving a strange shape to the corset:

 

Instead, moving the pieces around, I found a better alignment of the curves, as shown in this image:

 

As I tried this method, the seams seemed to work and give the right sort of shape, so I continued.

For this stage, I didn’t bone the toile, as I had no idea how much work I’d need to do on the pattern – it could turn out to be miles away from fitting and in need of extensive pinning. Trying the toile without bones would allow me to pin more easily and at least get an initial idea of shape and size.

Here is the toile laced closed:

 

So I probably don’t need to tell you that it was way too big around the bust. By several inches. Considering I used my bust measurement as the main horizontal measure when scaling up the pattern, I’m not quite sure how that happened. Clearly I made a mistake somewhere; perhaps I added too many lots of seam allowance.

However, after my initial annoyance at the bust size, I realised that whatever had happened had actually been quite serendipitous – the hips and waist were fitting quite well, but if I had printed the pattern out smaller, so it fitted at the bust, they would have been far too small. I also found myself smiling at the lovely curved seams swooping from the chest down on the tummy, giving a lovely Victorian silhouette that reminded me of those gorgeous corsets from my research. Also, the only wrinkles I could see seemed to be crumpling at the waist because of the lack of boning. This was looking promising!

A little pinning later, and I’d taken in the offending excess fabric around the chest. I decided not to take too much from the seam between 2 and 3, as that would have changed the shaping and direction of the seam lines, so I looked carefully in a mirror as I pinned, trying to divide the reduction between the seams and keeping most towards the back, as that was where a large part of the excess seemed to be. I have quite a narrow back, so that made sense.

The hips also needed some attention, mostly towards the bottom, where the pattern seemed to flare out, rather than sit close at the edge of the corset. I pinned a tiny amount at the front, also, but as at the bust, I split this carefully between the first and second seams to avoid pulling the seam line too far in one direction.

Here are the adjustments, with just one side pinned:

 

Much better!

You might also notice I’ve adjusted the bottom line in orange, to smooth out that curve. At some points, I also noted that I needed to add a few millimetres to the top or bottom of the pattern piece. Here is half the toile, showing all the parts I had to pinch out at the bust line:

 

And here’s all I pinned at the hip line, also showing the re-drawn bottom line:

 

Retuning to my machine, I made the changes and stitched down the seam allowances to give me quick and dirty boning channels.

You’ll be glad to see that for my second toile, I had a photographic assistant, rather than having to use the timer while my camera sat on a radiator – thanks to my gent for the help!

 

I did this fitting without a bra, so the corset was doing all the support and, considering I had just one 5mm spiral at each seam, I was pleased with its performance and shape. I did notice there was a little gaping at the top of the bust line, so I made a note to take out 8mm at the very top of seam between 2 and 3 and the same between 3 and 4. The original pattern did come in to cup the top of the bust a little on pieces 2 and 3 and I think I had smoothed this a little with my previous adjustments.

 

Once I was happy I had the fit, I drew the shape of that mysterious piece d, the boning pocket that would cover the hips and contain several bones, on the toile over the seam between panels 4 and 5. I cut it out to get my pattern piece for d:

 

On the back of my original pattern pieces I drew on my changes in narrow red pen, leaving seam allowances on.

 

Plans

With the pattern done, I could turn my thoughts to the final piece. There are several mentions in the patent of the lightness of the corset produced, this being a benefit of piece d, and I loved the brocade of the black piece from Kent State Museum, so I decided on a patterned coutil. Digging through my samples, I found the Belle coutil from Vena Cava – it felt strong, but light compared to other floral corsetry fabrics. I played around with the idea of using plain black satin for piece d and the other boning channels, but decided to keep it simple and light – perhaps on another iteration of this design I’ll try out contrasting boning channels. (How about grey spot broche and the grey fine herringbone coutil? And now I’m thinking about how much I need some grey satin coutil.)

Returning to the patent, however, I decided pieces 2 and 3 would have to be 2 layers to allow for the boning “pockets”, as Strauss calls them. Again, this reinforced my decision to stick to a lighter corsetry fabric.

With all the talk of lightness and having just read Luca Costigliolo’s article on synthetic whalebone at the time of making this toile, I also decided this would be an experiment in plastic boning.

 

In part 2, I’ll be working out the construction of this patent, trying out synthetic whalebone and attempting to make a magpie-inspired corset. See you then!

 

 

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