Hello everybody!

Thank you for reading my post, as you may have noticed I'm farely new in the world of corsetry and have a few questons I would like to ask:

I just finished my first ever corset, The Pretty housemaid corset. I made it out of 2 layers of strong non stretch cotton fabric (white) and steel boning with blue flossing.

After trying it on for the first time i noticed, that I probably should have altered the pattern... I used the original Pattern from Salen Jills Book, because the measures were praktically the same as mine. And even though the measures were fine, I then noticed, that the original Corset must have been made for a younger girl rather than a woman. The Waistline was too high... *cough*

But ok, next time I know: ALWAYS change the pattern. Learning by doing.

Apart from that detail, I noticed that although the original pattern was at a 20" waist (almost 60 cm) and my natural waist is 67 cm with the corset I actually have a waist witdh of 69cm.

And I put it on as tight as possible, breathing was hard, maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Is it normal to have the same/ a little bit bigger waist with the corset because of the boning or am is there something I am doing extremely wrong?


Thank you so much for your attention.


Alice <3

Hi Alice, your corset looks great. Note that people were shorter 100 years ago and generally they had a slightly different measures. Yes next time you should alter all the measures including the vertical ones and there are articles about taking measures and altering the patterns in the beginners section.
And for your other question - yes corset is always a bit bigger at the outside circumference. for example if corset have waist of 53 cm measured on the corset, when you wear it and measure around your waist it will be 55 cm for example. So corset size iz measured inside the corset not the outside cause layers and bones add volume as you have already noticed. Sorry for a bit late reply, but hope it was helpful.

May