The wonderful thing about surface decoration is that there are endless possibilities and countless variations in taste. For my part, I love a profusion of texture, sparkle and layered decoration but have found that the best way to reach a satisfactory result is to build up to it through regular exploration, samples and sketching.

The corset I am sharing with you today will hopefully function as a stepping stone. A sort of bridge between the archetypal Victorian corsetry that I love and the corseted gowns that I daydream about creating. As such, it makes use of layered techniques for an intricate finish.

What I really want to focus on in this piece, is the relationship between surface and shape... to demonstrate how decorative choices and silhouette can be explored and pushed so that they influence one another, giving more beautiful and interesting results.

An Inky Night Sky

We're surrounded by beauty, everywhere we look. Some of us have an urge to capture something of that beauty and we attempt to do so in various ways... Some photograph these things, some try to draw or paint them, some write songs, some simply enjoy the utter delight of the moment.

I used to try to paint the beautiful things I saw. But I never quite had the appropriate dedication for it, and I think the reason was that I personally found the medium to be somehow flat or dead. In coming to corsetry, I've found a medium which is very much alive and transformative. It is the presence of a body, a wearer, that really completes the garment, and so I think it is possible to capture or echo the essence of a beautiful thing with more power.

Whenever I pictured this corset, I imagined dark skies. That dusky moment where a colourful sunset transforms into a night sky. Shifting cloud, inky colours, violet sunsets, indistinct shadows, points of light... I imagined a fictional wearer who would have dark hair and dark features... I imagined the corset moving through low light so that viewers are left with just an impression of something beautiful, not pin-sharp details, as this is how night-scapes and sunsets are: shadowy, blurry, difficult to decipher...

Figure 2: Dark shapes cutting through the sky.
[Courtesy of BorgQueen on Wiki Commons.]

How does all this become a corset? By accident, really. By constantly pursuing beauty.

Inspiration and Shape

Figure 3: A Sparklewren corset with quite rounded bust shaping.As I have discussed before, violet is a classic Victorian colour. Many of the corsets from around this time feature exactly the aesthetics I love most, silk satin, full boning, etc. But I usually tend to explore these ideas with more contemporary shaping overall. My corsets are often plunge sweethearts with reasonably rounded bust shaping and a vertical side seam (figure 3). But there is one detail from many of these Victorian antiques that I haven't yet explored, much as I love it... fluted bust shaping

I am calling this shaping "fluted" for want of a better term, so if any historians are aware of this shape having ever been named, please do let me know.

This fluted shaping is exceptionally elegant. It appears to create a separated bust with the busk (or central steel) laying flat to the body, reminiscent of the unyielding wooden busks of regency corsetry. It is related to the body of the wearer too, being a shape that almost requires a large cup size for its creation. Indeed, it is perhaps this that causes the distinctive "fluted" shape, since it could be said that many Victorian corsets feature the same basic shaping with simply a less dramatic difference between underbust and bust measurement.

The TV110 corset pattern appears to be a good example of this. Figure 5 also shows us this gentle sloping "fluted" shape, but in combination with a typically Victorian dished abdomen and without the separation of the breasts.

So the early research suggests that I should explore this idea for a curvy figure. Not a problem, as I work with lovely models and friends who all have very different figures.

Figure 5: A gentle slope from waist to midbust (rather than a tight underbust and dramatic “cup like” bust curve) can be seen on many Victorian corsets.The shaping of the bust flares out from the body almost at the waist (certainly not from the underbust as many contemporary corsets are cut). The topline ends at midbust as is most common for the era. It this is also, in my opinion, the most beautiful way for a fluted shape to end since to curve the top edge back over the breast would be to disrupt and confuse that beautiful fluted line. Anything above this point would have to flatter the compressed and separated bust or not be used at all.

So I had this beautifully gliding silhouette in mind for a while and eventually a fully-formed design popped into my head.

In researching Victorian corsetry for inspiration I have seen a few wild colours (such as this incredible lapis lazuli blue and the classic violet shades mentioned above) thrown in amongst the more common putty, drab, and bridal tones... For some reason (I think perhaps it was seeing those colours) the beautiful dusks I had been thinking about and this Victorian inspired bust shaping just came together in my sketch book. The effect I wanted to create (the shifting, blurring, textural inky sky) seemed the make more sense with calligraphic fluted bust shaping than with my curvier rounded sweetheart plunges (figure 3). Perhaps those fluted shapes recalled the black outlines of the tall buildings in Birmingham or the mountains of the Lake District, I don't really know, but I was certain that I wanted to take that strong fluted shape and soften it through layered textural surface decoration (figure 6).

You can see in my sketchbook how I considered both this fluted shaping and my more usual gentle rounded shaping. The shaping has a knock-on effect to the topline, as mentioned above, and I was curious to see if it was possible to marry the two (sweetheart plunge and fluted midbust shaping) effectively or not. It also became apparent that the straighter top edge and fluted shaping would make visually enhancing the "V" of the torso especially important, if the corset was going to remain flattering in the way that I consider most beautiful.

Starting with shape in this way makes for more interesting aesthetics, in my opinion. It means that your decorative choices are an intrinsic part of the corset overall since they have been considered in relationship to the shape rather than stuck on as an after-thought.

Figure 6: My first sketched ideas.

Creating the Fluted Bust Shape

We need to create more room in the bust with a forwards thrust, whilst also separating the bust. If you were flat patterning this style of corset, you could take an individual horizontal measure over each breast (as you might for bra drafting and mark your pattern perhaps at 1" in from the centre-front (CF) and at the side-bust point. You could then use your breast measurement to create volume between these points. Ie: all of the space required for the bust is localised to these points, leaving the CF and underarm more flat to the body. For this corset I did not have ready access to that particular measurement and so I tweaked an existing flat pattern in such a way that I thought might work.

As far as I could figure out, the fluted shaping came from three main features:

1) Drafting the volume of the breasts into a localised space.
2) Smoothing over the underbust curve directly beneath the bust for a flatter shape.
3) Flattening out (and even slightly tightening) the next seam (side-bust) to help push the breast forwards into the fluted shape.

My altered pattern looked like this

Taking the first two panels of an existing bespoke pattern for a curvy individual (figure 8), I smoothed the lines from just above the waist to the midbust (figure 9). This had the effect of loosening the underbust a touch, compressing the lower half of the breast, and slightly enlarging the midbust area for fullness. I then also pulled in the side-bust edge of panel 2 (figure 10), in a bid to push the breast tissue forwards (into the fluted midbust area). The top edges were marked out in a gentle curve (figure 11), under the assumption that once pushed out by the body this will appear to be an almost straight edge along the top of the corset.

Figure 8: The first two panels of the original pattern.	Figure 9: "Fluting" the bust seam.
Figure 10: Tightening the side-bust.	Figure 11: The completed alterations.

Using a paper mock-up pinned to a mannequin (figure 12), I quickly looked over the new shaping and double-checked and trued the seams (figure 13).

Figure 12: The new "fluted" bust shaping.

Figure 13: Paper can only give us an impression of the final shape, but is a very useful way of checking patterning before creating proper corsets and/or toiles.

This looked good to me, so I traced out the pattern pieces in stiff card with a 5/8" seam allowance and closed front (figure 14). The rest of the corset made use of the existing pattern pieces, so I had decided to retain a very curvy hip shape alongside our new fluted bust shape.

I was getting quite excited by this stage! In creating the pattern, I was beginning to see areas where my construction choices could also have an impact on the final shaping.

Figure 14: The final pattern pieces.

Colour

The first thing I wanted to do was create the dark inky wash of colour I imagined. As with the "V" lace placement you see on many of my corsets, I hoped to accentuate and streamline the upper torso as it flows into the waist, thus visually enhancing the swell of the hips below and keeping the upper portion flattering despite its straight top edge. This is also why I chose to retain a reasonably low hip to this corset instead of cutting it high, for example.

I considered a few approaches for achieving this colour-fade effect...

1) Construct and then dip-dye the corset.
2) Dip dye the fabric and cut it with a view to matching the colour (much like you would match a pattern).
3) Purchase fabric that already had a similar colouring and match at the seams.
4) Paint the fabric (much as you would if you were hand-painting a silk scarf, for example) either before or after stitching.

I decided to take the latter route as, although risky, I felt it might give me the greatest control over the shading of the fabric.

I read the instructions on my silk paints and made sure I didn't mind getting covered in paint! These paints can be diluted, blended, layered, and washed. Once painted and dry, the silk had to be pressed on a high heat (between pressing clothes) to fix the paint. For this reason, it seemed safer to paint the panels before stitching so that there would be no danger of unfixed areas of paint in hard-to-press areas (such as right next to the seam). This was a shame, as I had originally wanted to construct the corset with silk thread topstitching and then paint it, so that the stitching lines would disappear into the fabric of the corset also. Perhaps next time...

I chose blue and black (figure 15), as I very much had Violets (the flowers) in mind. I referred again to my sketches, thinking about the shading of the silk (figure 16).

Figure 15: The paints, violet silk pieces and wide brush.

Figure 16: Thinking about shading.

Then I began painting (figure 17). This process was very loose, it isn't something you can be precise about and my initial idea of neat graduated shading quickly went out the window... which actually made it rather lovely in the end. Working on a dark fabric also presented problems. The fabric appeared, obviously enough, almost black when damp, so it was very difficult to see which areas were saturated with pigment and which were simply washed with inky water. Figure 18 is a great example of this. In the centre with have the centre-front (CF) panel. The second panels to either side appear to be quite evenly painted. But upon drying and fixing, there was a marked difference between the two with the left-hand side (as worn) barely tinted and the right-hand side (as worn) quite a lot darker.

Figure 17: The first brush strokes! There appears to be a very clear line here, but this was actually just moisture, not paint. The end result was more organic and uncontrollable than I had expected.

Figure 18: The first three panels, painted and drying.


I then continued around the corset, using each previous pair of panels to guide my paint placement on the next (figures 19 and 20). Figure 21 shows the organic and painterly result (indeed, this image was taken under tungsten bulbs, so it shows the effect actually more dramatically than it really is). The darker areas swirl and bleed like inkblots or watercolour washes, and the painted areas are slightly more matte than the untouched silk.

Figure 19: Lining Panels 2 up to Panels 3.

Figure 20: Panels 3 painted.

 Figure 21: The painted and fixed panels.

Construction

As this article is about the relationship between silhouette and surface decoration, I am not going to go into full construction detail. Depending upon the end result, your fluted corset could have interior casings, exterior casings, be fully-boned or only minimally supported... There are any number of variations that could work.

Here are, however, my key observations from stitching this corset.

Firstly, steel...

Figure 22: Heavy duty busk and flat steel.As discussed, the "fluted" shape separates the breasts with the CF sitting close to the chest wall. This is not something I have ever been asked to do, so it was intriguing thinking about ways of encouraging the corset to sit as required.

The first obvious option for any corsetiere looking to create a very flat shape through the CF should be either a heavy duty busk or flat steel.  This corset has a closed front, so I am using a wide heavy-duty steel.

These steels are considerably stronger than flexible steel busks that they really do offer a huge difference to the fit of a corset where a straight front or flat tummy is required. This likewise applies to the upper half of the torso, and so these items can be used to help maintain separation between the breasts along with a closer fit at the top of the busk. All of these details must be in balance, of course, and what suits one client or design may not suit another. Learn more about patterning/fitting for a large bust in Isabelle Mekel's articles.

It seemed to me that encouraging a full bust to sit in a very forwards position would automatically encourage the CF to push forwards too, unless it was very sturdily encouraged backwards. Look back to the Regency corsets and their solid wooden busks again, for evidence of this.

Next, turn-of-cloth...

We often talk about turn-of-cloth in regards to getting our corset layers to sit smoothly around full hips and busts. As touched upon in my Hearts cincher article, this turn-of-cloth can be accounted for either by prepping and pinning/basting your layers before machine stitching, or by manipulating the layers as you stitch by curving them up and away from the machine bed. The severity of the curve equates to the severity of the curve when the corset is on the body. This is a very intuitive way of creating curve, and isn't suitable for every application, but I love it!

So I decided to help encourage this separated bust shape by thinking about a "negative" turn-of-cloth at the very centre of the CF panel. I stitched the wide steel channel at CF with the fashion fabric facing up. This automatically eases slightly more fabric to the underside of the "fabric sandwich" (silk on top, then two layers of coutil), resulting in an outer layer that is slightly shorter than the inner layers. Imagine the ever-decreasing layers of an onion. I then stitched the next channels to either side of this in the same way, but by holding the edges of the fabric sandwich up a touch higher I increased the turn-of-cloth. Figures 23 and 24 show the CF panel lying on a flat surface. You can see how with only three boning channels we have created a dip to the top of the CF. This will, hopefully, help the CF to remain closer to the chest wall whilst the rest of the bust curves and opens outwards.

Figure 23: The CF panel, manipulated through the sewing machine to create turn-of-cloth.

Figure 24: The CF panel, manipulated through the sewing machine to create turn-of-cloth.

The remaining panels were stitched in the normal way, creating the more usual turn-of-cloth (with the inner layers every so slightly shorter than the outer layers). Figure 25 shows the dramatic fluted shaping of the bust at this stage. It's a good sign if your corset wants to hold its intended shape even before steels and a corset are contained within it, so I was happy with the progress. In figure 26, you can see the shaping from a front view, along with the haphazard colour washes.

Figure 25: The fluted bust shape is starting to reveal itself.
Figure 26: Front view.

Silhouette and Colour

With the patterning altered and the corset painted and stitched, the corset was ready for further surface decoration. I like to do the bulk of my hand-embellishment before the insertion of steels as I find it easier to work around any fiddly areas whilst the corset is still "soft". If you're creating a lightly steel-boned corset, however, it is not necessary to delay that part of construction.

With Part 1 we have explored some of the historical and personal reference points for this corset and looked at ways of creating the very particular details in question (fluted bust shaping and inky colouring).

In Part 2, I will share the surface decoration that completed the corset, considering further how the surface textures and silhouette relate to one another. It is my feeling that the most interesting garment design considers all those elements together (silhouette, wearer's figure, and surface decoration), not in isolation. The cut, fabric, embellishment, colour... if they are all harmoniously balanced you can find yourself working on very satisfying projects.