As I am sure most of you are aware by now, earlier in the year Leicestershire County Council Record Office made available images from the pattern books of Market Harborough corset company R. & W. H. Symington, an amazing resource for any corset maker or historical costumer. The patterns come with very little in the way of text or explanation, so we are left making educated guesses about some elements of their use and construction.

For this article I am looking at the pattern with the Symington’s reference number 2370. This pattern was the one out of all of the patterns made available that jumped out at me as unusual. Several aspects of the pattern interested me straight away, the lovely scoop neckline, the straps, and most interestingly, the fact that every other panel was straight sided!

I spent quite a while trying to figure out a reason for the straight sided panels, and came up with a couple of ideas that seemed to be the most likely answers. These were the mass produced corsets of the day, they would have been churned out, produced as cheaply and quickly as the company could manage while still producing a wearable garment and a fashionable silhouette. Having regular, straight sided panels would possibly make it easier to cut out with less fabric wastage. The second and more intriguing idea I had was that possibly by altering the width of the straight sided panels only, you could create a range of sizes far more simply than trying to scale up or down a curved corset panel. Unsure as to whether this idea could or would work, the only way to find out - really - was to try making this corset in a range of sizes by altering the width of the straight sided panels.
 

My first job was to make up the pattern in the original size and proportions. Additional information provided by the Snibston Fashion collections helped with scaling the pattern, they have suggested printing on A2 paper will give the pattern approximately actual size. However, as not everyone has access to an A2 printer, I have described here how I scaled the pattern from an A3 print out.

Working on the assumption that the corset waist for the finished piece would be approximately 22-24” (again, the Snibston Fashion collection have said that this is the approximate waist size for all the adult patterns they have released) and the length at the front centre would be approximately 14”, I photocopied the pattern enlarging it to fit this sizing. This was done by measuring and using a simple calculation. Printed out on A3 paper, the total waist size was approximately 8” for one side (half the overall corset waist measurement) and 9.5” front central length. So if I want a 24” corset, half the corset needs to measure 12” at the waist, so I need to enlarge by a factor of 1.5 (8x1.5=12). This would make the front central length 9.5x1.5=14.25”, so just about spot on for what I was looking for!

The enlarging of the pattern had to be done in parts due to the paper size, but was done by simply photocopying the printout at 150%. This take a little bit of work cutting out and sticking together the parts of the pattern, and you will need to be careful to match the pieces accurately, but seems to work fairly well.  I would recommend sticking the whole sheets together before cutting as this gives you multiple reference points to match up the pieces.

The patterns in the Symington pattern books do not appear to have any seam allowances, so these needed to be added before cutting any fabric. Also, as the shoulder straps which extend from the back centre panel and run off the original pattern image, these needed to be added to the pattern too. I have assumed that the shoulder strap just extends in a straight line from the part shown on the pattern image. I added 14” length to the shoulder strap from the point at which it ran off the original pattern. I added the seam allowances and straps by transferring the pattern pieces to graph paper.

The original pattern indicates that the pattern was corded, this is another possible reason for the straight sided panels, fully cording a simple regular shape may be quicker and easier than a curved shape. However, given the timescales I was working to in order to complete the corsets and this article and having never made a corded corset before, I opted to stick to my usual construction method using steel boning throughout, boning on the seams. I have used contrast external bone casings to more clearly show the boundaries of the individual panels.

For simplicity, I have labelled the pattern pieces 1 to 7 starting at the front centre, so making pieces 2, 4 and 6 the straight sided panels, and 1, 3, 5 and 7 the curved sided ones.

Corset 1 - 24 inch waist

Made with no alteration to the original pattern size or proportions (24” waist).

The corset made to the original pattern proportions measured 32” at the fullest part of the bust, 24” at the waist and 34” at the bottom edge (approximately top edge of the hip bone). As with many Victorian patterns, this corset has a shorter bust to waist measurement than I would use for a ‘standard’ modern corset, but not as short as I have seen with many other period patterns. The bust to waist measurement is approximately 6.5” for this pattern at the scale I have enlarged it to.
The two sets of photos show this corset on a mannequin, and modelled by a friend, Esdi. Although Esdi normally wears 24” corsets, this one wasn’t really curvy enough for her figure, the hip and bust laced to about as tight as would be comfortable, but there would still have been capacity for further reduction at the waist. It was a little too short for her, the top edge sitting too low and so not really providing any support for her bust.

As a general assessment of the pattern, the panels fitted together easily and gave a nice, relatively gentle silhouette, less dramatically curvy than some other period corsets, but still very shapely.  I have perhaps made the shoulder straps a little too long, but it would be easy enough to shorten these. The positioning of the shoulder straps, and the width of the scooped neckline are relatively narrow to a modern eye, sitting inside where a modern bra strap would be.

Personally, I think with the relatively gentle shaping and the shoulder straps, which are very reminiscent of some of the existing children’s corsets from the Victorian era, this may well have been a corset intended for a young lady, an intermediate stage between the childrens' garments and a full adult corset. This is only a guess on my part, I have no real evidence to back this up.

Corset 2 - 26 inch waist

Keeping panels 1, 3, 5 and 7 the same size as in corset 1, and increasing the width of panels 2, 4, and 6 by 1/3” each (thus increasing the overall waist by 2”, making the corset a 26” waist).

I used graph paper to enlarge the straight sided panels, keeping the sides of each panel the same length but increasing the width. This will of course change the angles of the top and bottom edges of the panel, which is easy enough to work out for most of the panels by just connecting the vertical lines. However, for panel 2 with a pointed top line, the positioning of the point can be altered to widen or narrow the neckline. I have kept the point in approximately the same place on the enlarged panel so that the highest point is fairly central.

As would be expected with the 1/3” increase in the width of these panels, this corset had final measurements of 34” at the bust, 26” at the waist and 36” at the bottom edge.

The photos show this corset on the same mannequin as the 24” corset is displayed on, with a little added padding at the bust to fill it out slightly. As you can see from the photos, the shape and proportions of the corset are maintained reasonably well, while increasing the overall size.  

Corset 3 - 28 inch waist

Keeping panels 1, 3, 5 and 7 the same size as corset 1 and increasing the width of panels 2, 4, and 6 by 2/3” each (thus increasing the overall waist by 4”, making the corset a 28” waist).

As before, the alterations were made by transferring the pattern to graph paper, working from the original pattern each time rather than the pattern from corset 1 or 2 to try to avoid exacerbating any introduced errors.

The final measurements for this corset were 36” at the bust, 28” at the waist and 38” at the bottom edge.

The photographs of this corset are again on the same mannequin, more heavily padded this time at both the bust and the hips to fill out the increased size of the corset.

The fact that the straight sided and curved panels alternate with each other means the increased width is distributed fairly evenly around the corset. Panel 2 lies at the front and adds width to the neckline between the straps, extra additional width can be added by altering the positioning of the high point on the top edge within that panel. Panel 6 at the side back, to the outside of the shoulder strap, so widening the panel doesn’t alter the positioning of the strap or the angle at which it sits over the shoulder.

Panel 4 sits at approximately the under arm at the top, but angles forwards towards the bottom edge of the corset. This means that as the pattern is enlarged in this manner, more of the added width to the panels is being added to the front of the corset than the back. While in these corsets I don’t think it distorts the shape overly, I can see this being an issue if I were to try it with larger size increases.

While I feel this has worked reasonably well for the limited sizes I have experimented with here, I am not certain how far one could push the increase; there will probably come a point where just expanding panels 2, 4 and 6 and not changing 1, 3, 5, and 7 will not work well. However, for small alterations in waist size it appears to be a quick and simple way to enlarge the pattern while keeping the shape and style. I am still not convinced in myself that this is the reason for the straight sided panels in this pattern, but I think it is one of a few possible explanations for them and has certainly been an interesting experiment to see exactly how it would work.