Corset DrawingEvery now and then you come across a pattern which, despite someone's best intentions, winds up being more about recreating the wheel than improving upon it. In 1907, Daniel Kops, a famous corset maker from New York and owner of numerous corset patents, wound up doing just that. His 'Improvements in Corsets', US patent #849136 would do away with bias bindings around the top and (optionally) the bottom edges of the corset by using Swiss embroidered lace (which has an embroidered lace edge) for the corset's single layer of fabric and, in order to strengthen the corset at the waist when made of such thin fabric, created a separate set of pattern pieces for the top and bottom - to be later connected and reinforced with waist tape.

Whether these improvements would actually work remains to be seen. As this style of corset was less about significant reductions in measurements and more about obtaining the S-curve silhouette through the use of padding or bust improvers, the successful use of such a thin fabric, provided there was be sufficient boning, seems plausible. This first article will focus on scaling-up the patent’s cutting pattern to the appropriate size and fitting the mock-up. The next article will then go into construction of the final corset.

To start, I’d need to scale the pattern up from the original patent and I immediately turned to Sandra Stuart’s article on scaling digital corset patterns. The instructions are very clear, which is good because Mr. Kops’ cutting layout was not going to make this an easy task.

As previously mentioned, the tops and bottoms of the corset were two completely different sets of pattern pieces, six for the top and five for the bottom; each set would be sewn together and the two sets would then be connected along the waistline. Some bones would be placed along seam lines that matched up between the top and bottom pattern pieces, but most other bones would, for example, follow a seam between two top pattern pieces and then run along the middle of a bottom pattern piece, and vice versa. Construction of the mock up would be made slightly easier knowing that the top and bottom pattern pieces would either match exactly at a seam or one seam on the top/bottom would split the middle of the oppose pattern piece. But before I could worry about matching up the waistlines, I needed to first determine the order of the pieces.

However, none of the pieces were labelled in the cutting layout, and it quickly became clear when comparing the cutting layout to the corset drawing that the pattern pieces hadn't been laid out in the order they'd need to be sewn. Good for professional corset makers trying to save on fabric, not so good for modern sewers.

Cutting Layout

The top pattern pieces, at least, corresponded to the top of the corset and I began by eyeballing the general shapes of the pattern pieces and comparing them to the patent drawing. Some would be easier than others - straight lines along one side meant it had a good chance of being a center front or back piece whereas curvier pieces in the top were likely part of the bust, but didn't seem to fit correctly next to the other pieces. Others still were simply a mystery.

I even tried taking the angles of the top and bottom edges of each piece to see if anything matched the cutting layout, but that only left me more confused than before as pieces I had been positive of suddenly didn’t match at all. The only layout that seemed to make any sense involved flipping some pieces over in order to get the right shape. A quick cut out and taping together of the small scale pattern pieces seemed to confirm my theory, but I’d need to start scaling-up pieces to be completely sure.

After copying each pattern piece into GIMP image editor, I put them in the approximate order I thought they might go, and drew some rough guidelines to keep everything even. The easiest way to start was to identify the center fronts and backs, trusting that the top and bottom pieces together would form a nice straight line when lined up correctly - which they did!

Note that some of the 'i' marks on the pattern pieces look backwards - this is where I started experimenting with flipping pattern pieces to get the right shape shown in the corset drawing.

Matching Center Fronts and Backs

I created reference lines for the high bust, low bust, two sets of waist lines (one for the top and another for the bottom) to be combined after I was sure of the placement, and a hip line. Now that I had made my best guesses at which pattern pieces went where, I wanted to try one more test before moving forward with scaling up to full size.

Creating reference lines

Knowing that the top and bottom edges would have to match perfectly where pattern pieces met, I started lining-up the pattern pieces along their seams. Since the instructions specify that the waist lines would need to be adjusted before connecting the top and bottom sets, I matched the pattern pieces at the outer edges. As I started in the middles and worked my way out, the pieces naturally began to curve and, I’ll admit somewhat surprisingly, looked more or less just like the corset drawing!

Comparing Pattern Pieces to Finished Corset Layout

Now that I had finally identified the layout of the pattern pieces, scaling everything up was the easy part. As my hips are large and less squishy than the rest of me, I made sure that was the measurement everything would scale around. Conveniently, my hips and waist tend to be proportional when dealing with Victorian and Edwardian patterns, but I knew this would mean having a lot of alterations in the bust down the line. If you need to size a pattern to fit you, make sure you size it to your largest/least squishy measurement!

The final pattern, printed and taped together:

Pattern Printed and Taped

Unsure of whether or not the pattern pieces had seam allowance built into them, I erred on the side of caution and drew in a ½” (13mm) seam allowance around the sides and bottom of the mock-up (there was no need for this around the top where it would be the decorative edge of the fabric).

Paper Pattern Cut, on Mock-Up

Below is a good example of how some pieces would need to be cut on the bias in order to have the pattern edges align with the decorate edge of the fabric. Since I’m expecting the front bust and back hips to flare away from the body a bit in the style of the period, it was still unclear at this point how much trouble this would cause further on, in terms of stretch.

Patterns Cut on Bias

A problem I often run into is forgetting which pieces belong to which half of the corset. Since I had even more pieces than usual to worry about with this corset, I made extra sure to label each piece as a 'left' or 'right' piece and I also labelled the seams with the corresponding pattern piece it will be sewn to. It takes a little more time up-front to do this, but would save me a lot of headache and confusion later when, inevitably, the cats dove into the middle of the project and scattered the pattern pieces across the floor.

Labelling Pieces ‘Right’ and ‘Left’

After everything had been cut, I laid out the pattern pieces for one side. It still looks like the drawing! At this point, I could safely say that the final layout of the pattern pieces had been established.

Mock Up pieces laid out like corset drawing

After sewing all of the seams, I made sure to press each one open. It makes a tremendous difference and doesn’t take very much time at all.

Pieces sewn, seams ironed

Matching up the waist line was difficult since there wasn’t always enough stretch in a particular piece to get it to sit in the exact right spot along the waist (pattern pieces cut on the bias provided a lot more stretch in this step). In the photo above, piece 3 (top back front) would need to be moved to the left another ½” (13mm) to be centered over piece 9 (bottom middle). Somehow, I only wound up with this problem on one side, but for the life of me couldn’t get the fabric to stretch any further. For the next version, I would need to cut the waist line a little more to give myself more stretch.

Side waist line close up

I first tried the mock-up on without the bones, just to get a quick idea of what the bust was going to look like, start making any necessary adjustments along the seams, and to make sure the corset would be big enough in the hips. Minus some seams not quite matching up as planned, the overall fit was as expected – snug in the waist, a little extra room in the back for some light padding, and a ridiculous amount of room in the front bust area.

Mock Up - Front View Mock Up - Angled Front View

Mock Up - Side View Mock Up - Angled Back View

Mock Up - Back View

The best shot, of course, is seeing just how much of a gap there really was in the front bust.

Mock Up - Bird’s Eye Bust View

The key to adjusting the bust was to make sure that any reduction radiated straight out from the waistline and didn’t mold around the bust to still give the proper silhouette.

Adjusting the Bust

After re-sewing some seams to reduce the excess space in the bust, it was clear that the top edges were no longer matching at the points where each pattern piece met. I wanted to do a quick fitting on the mannequin to figure out just how to fix these uneven edges, but now it was time to put in some boning to make sure I was looking at it properly. Most of the boned areas will have two bones in the final version, but I just used one set of bones to start.

Mock Up with Boning Channels

Even with fewer bones, the final shape of the corset was starting to show:

Boned Mock Up - Front View Boned Mock Up - Angled Front View

Boned Mock Up - Side View Boned Mock Up - Angled Back View

Boned Mock Up - Back View

Now that the bust has been taken in, it’s very clear that the top edges were not lining up. There were two ways to fix this - keeping in mind that all of the top edges would need to stay completely straight as they would be running along the decorative edge of the fabric in the final version of the corset, with no binding.

The first way would be to cut piece 2 (the top middle front) lower to match the edge of piece 1 (the top center front), while staying parallel to the original top edge of piece 2. The up side to this method is that it would not have any effect on the current grain of the pattern pieces. The down side to this method is that I would then need to reduce every piece by the same amount afterwards to continue matching the edges, which would wind up reducing the entire corset height being lowered by ½” (13mm) (alternatively I could have also tried raising the center front pieces for a similar effect). It was certainly a possibility, but less than ideal if I wanted to keep the corset higher in the back for support and lower in the front.

The second method would be to cut the top edges of pieces 2 and 3 at new angles. They would still have straight edges along the tops of the pattern pieces in order to continue lining up with the lace edge of the final corset fabric, but the downside is that the pattern pieces would need to be cut even further off grain than the original pieces.

In the end, I decided that the pattern had already been laid out in such a way as to not take the usual grain lines into effect and there should be enough boning along the seams and centers of the pieces to maintain the proper shape, so I ended up trimmed the top edges at angles.

Uneven Bust Close-Up Marked Bust Close-Up

Altered Bust Close-Up

One last fitting of the newly-fitted bust with its trimmed edges resulted in a corset that fit pretty well! I’m glad I added the ½” (13mm) seam allowance to the mock up pieces; although I could have comfortably laced down further while still getting the right shape, I don’t know that the thin fabric would be able to hold up to the stress.

The bust close-up shows the difference between the untrimmed (left) and trimmed (right) edges.

Final Mock Up - Front View Final Mock Up - Bust Close-Up

Final Mock Up - Angled Front View Final Mock Up - Side View

Final Mock Up - Angled Back View Final Mock Up - Back View

I’m still a little skeptical just how well a single layer corset made of such lightweight fabric will hold up, but we’ll find out in the next article!

 

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