All posts tagged: briar rose corset

Every rose has its thorns

Remember my briar rose corset?  That thing is evil.  Well, technically it is  evil #2 (evil #1, of course, being pintucks) I kinda knew from the start that making a straight fronted corset would be heinous.  I mean, just look at the advertisements for the things: How do you even make the human form look anything remotely close to that!?!  Not easily, that’s for sure! But I tried my best.  I draped my pattern on Isabelle, following Waugh’s pattern from a real corset, which must have fit someone at some point. Then I fitted it, or tried to.  It’s really hard to fit an anatomically improbable waist cinching corset on a natural figure.  I ended up doing about 6 fittings, and going through that many redrafts of the pattern.  The best luck I had with the fittings was fitting it over my nougat corset (which at least achieved some waist-cinching for me). I didn’t take any pictures of the fittings because by the time I got the mock-up on and pinned I was so grumpy …

A 1903 corset for Emily

I realised I can’t call my 1903 straight fronted corset to go with Emily’s dress ‘Emily’s corset’, as I already did another corset for a different (far more fabulous) Emily. So, I need to have another name for it.  And I think I have an idea, inspired by the fabrics I’m using. The outer fabric is an oyster coloured silk shantung.  It’s a gorgeous fabric: almost no slub (the usual shantung problem, which makes it of dubious historical value), and it glows like a pearl. The story of how I got the fabric is adorable.  My mother in law gave it to me, on my birthday, but she stressed that it wasn’t my present (she also gave me something else, all gorgeously wrapped), it was just something she had lying around that she wasn’t using.  Why wasn’t it a present?  Because that would be like giving me work for my birthday. Awwww.  Hehe.  I still haven’t managed to convince my darling MIL that really, I would love getting fabric for every birthday. The lining fabric …