I have never written for Foundations Revealed before so feel I should introduce myself. My name is Emily Lowe and I have been making corsets for about four years. My design label is Rose Von Sweet’s Decadent Delicates, and as well as designing and making corsets and burlesque costumes, I also perform with a local burlesque troupe in Nottingham in the UK.

I was lucky enough to go to the Oxford Conference of Corsetry this year. During the conference, I attended a workshop by the wonderfully talented Jenny Wren Hampshire of Sparklewren. She advocated looking back on antique corsets with fresh eyes in order to learn from the past, so I put my name forward for this challenge on a whim thinking that this patent would be more than achievable to replicate. This article will explain if that assumption was true... and I am sure those among you who have experienced working with patents are already feeling my pain!

The T. S. Gilbert Corset No. 332,245 looks very simple on the face of it. It is comprised of five pieces per side. He believed that this patent would improve the corset with a 'continuous fabric around the waistline'. He also wanted to avoid gores at the breast whilst still achieving 'a perfect fit upon the person'. The patent achieves this by having a seam down the bust line to fit the first half of the breast then a side gore to fit the other half of the breast. There is then a hip gore and a curved back seam. He does not really describe fabric choices, boning placement or grain of fabric.

 

I have never drafted a hip gore or a gusset. That hasn't stopped me from going ahead and experimenting with this patent. I also don't have very much experience with this period of corsetry. In fact my own corsets are all made for burlesques, so my interpretation of the pattern will not be a historically accurate one, but I am excited to see what I learn from the experience.

I could see from the patent what he was trying to achieve; a good fit with as few pattern pieces as possible... I had never tackled anything like this so I was interested in whether this should make for an easy mock-up or a difficult one.

My initial approach to sizing the patent up was to get a reprographics friend to resize the pattern pieces for me to my own waist measurement. My friend readily agreed... but alas fate was against me, every time we were going to exchange the pattern something prevented us from meeting up! The next time we could both meet up was set for after the deadline for this article so a different approach was needed.

I decided to try drafting the pattern from scratch. So I brainstormed some ideas, should I use an existing fitting pattern? And then redraw the pieces as shown in the patent? As I don't have much experience drafting hip panels and gores I opted to do a 3D pattern draft. The Clingfilm Method is something I've used in the past and I have always got a decent toile started pretty quickly.

I have a big photo shoot planned in the near future and the model is beautifully petite, so I knew I wanted to draft a pattern for her to wear. I thought this would be a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. As I will probably keep adding to the corset for future shoots I decided I wanted to keep the pattern to an industry UK size 8. Hence the use of a mannequin to draft the pattern

The Oxford Conference has sparked many ideas for me to experiment with including rethinking what I know about boning - specifically, the old argument of metal vs. plastic, and after having a gander at some stays that were boned with plastic, I have been wanting to find an opportunity to experiment. We know that metal boning changed the way corsetry was made in the Victorian Era,, but is it historically accurate compared to other boning types that were used prior such as reed, baleen, cording, etc. ? I have therefore decided to make two pieces with the pattern - one with metal the other with plastic boning - in order compare how it effects fit, feel etc.

The vision I have for this pattern, is that it will form part of a dramatic gown that will be modelled by a lovely young local actress/ model. She is quite young, and so I find the idea of experimenting with plastic boning for her intriguing.

 

What I hope to acheive:

• Draft a pattern for this patent using The Clingfilm Method,
• Use an industry size 8 mannequin,
• End up with a working toile that can then be made into something exciting for a photo shoot,
• I would also like to experiment with plastic and metal boning in the finished corset,
• Make two pieces from the pattern in my next article in order to compare pros and cons of plastic vs. metal.

 

Pattern drafting and fitting

This is Silvie - she will be my glamorous assistant for this article.

 

I bought some new cling film and masking tape, and got started. There are many tutorials on how to do this on YouTube, it is the font of much useful information so go have a look around. As you wrap the clingfilm keep smoothing it to the surface or person that you are patterning.

 

When you have a good four or five layers you can start marking out your pattern. I started with the centre front and centre back seams - I marked one for the right and one for the left, as the patent requires a curved back seam to help the fit of the finished corset.

 

I then started marking in the other panels following his instructions for the patent.

 

I then marked the seam lines with a Sharpie. When I finished I carefully cut the cling film from the mannequin and laid them out on some brown pattern paper. I then aligned them on a waist line and then trued the pieces up with a trusty ruler.

 

Next I added a seam allowance (3/8") and then cut it out.  As the patent doesn't mention fabric grain I put all pieces on the straight and it cut them out.

 

Once cut out, I then stitched the centre front to the middle/back section.

 

I then inserted the underarm piece and then stitched the hip pieces together. Once the hip was inserted all the pieces were together.

 

I then checked the fit against the mannequin.

 

I was not entirely happy with the fit, and at this point I wanted to give up!

• The hip panel needs to be deeper and come lower towards the front,
• The little concave curve needs to be shorter and perhaps a little steeper,
• I think there needs to be a bit more nip in the waist.

Luckily I have a corset-making mum with whom I can share all my corset making woes with. She suggested I take a step back make up the other side and see what happens. She counselled that it is not a complete loss and with some tweaks this could fit really well. So I refrained from quitting in frustration and followed her advice.

When I made up the other half I also inserted some eyelets directly into the toile... I didn't want to use some standard lacing bars as the back seam is curved. When I laced the toile on the mannequin I was surprised to discover that the fit was no where near as terrible as I thought it would be looking at the half toile I did earlier, but there was still a lot of wrinkling and creasing.  Again I was disheartened but then realised that boning might actually remove most of the creasing/ collapsing that was occurring.

So to alleviate the collapsing I grabbed some ridge-line and stitched a strip into the center front the bust seams and, down the sides and along the center back. Low and behold the pattern began to take shape. And I am actually quite happy with the shape of the corset.

 

There is still some wrinkling happening but I am confident that this will stretch out with more boning. You may also note that the bottom line of the corset is sitting quite high on my mannequin, this is intentional as this is where the skirt of the gown will start in final garment.

 

I am really quite surprised about the fit over the bust. And as you can see from the side view, the hip and underarm panels do give quite an interesting shape to the corset.

 

What I have learned from this experience:

• Don't give up when things don‘t seem to be going well. If you can get a good friend or sewing mentor to help you look at your work objectively, DO IT! Before you give up...
• Don't underestimate antique patterns; simplicity, like beauty, appears to be in the eye of the beholder. I really thought I would be able to do this with little problem and ended up almost giving up
• That vertical panels are not the only way to get good shaping in corsetry - there are more horizontal lines on this corset pattern than there are vertical ones.

 

Things I would do differently:

• I would work a little more on the shaping on the hip and underarm panels. I think what Gilbert was trying to achieve is out of my skill set right now and I would like to practice with hip gores and gussets to get more experience of how they work on the body.
• I would have liked to have pattern-drafted this onto a more period appropriately-shaped mannequin. I think a mannequin with a shape remeniscent of the period would have achieved a more historically-accurate shape.

 

What I will be doing next:

So now that I have the basis of a very nice toile,, thanks to the patent genius of T.S Gilbert, I can now get onto the fun stuff! In the next article I will be using the pattern to create a little something like this; one with plastic and the other with metal boning in order to compare the feel of the two materials...

 

 

add