When I visited London last weekend I didn’t think to bring my corset and sewing machine back with me to Coventry. There clearly was no cognitive process involved in this choice, I have a tendency to be a bit slow on realising whats important to me.
I now have just over weeks before I’m going to London, that’s a long time before I can start finishing ‘The Corset of Doom’. So now all I can do is prepare. Some of which is simple and some not so simple.I have limited funds at the moment so this is defiantly going to be a corset on a shoestring. So what I need is……
Knowledge is power; I’m going to splash out on 2 corset books on amazon.
I never heard or seen of the books before, the review and descriptions appear to imply that they are tech books, but we shall see.
I’m still organising my thoughts in regards to Design choices but there four distinct sections; Boning, Finishing Bias, Front fastening, and Back Fastening.
Boning:
For me the only way is Steel I hate plastic boning with a passion. The question is do I single (right) or Double (middle) bone? Both will give the effect of 3 lines of stitching, just the width between will change, After doing a lot of silly doodles I realised im just going to have to wait until I get my sewing machine and I can do a sample of both.
Finishing Bias: The colour of the fabric im using would lend itself to reds and golds and yellows but I just don’t feel it. I want the Bias finishing to be black, in fact I want all the detailing to be black, busk, eyelets, laces everything. (Refraining from wedging in some cheesy rolling stones reference took a lot of self-control.) I’m not so sure about the material of this black binding, cotton or satin? the fabric is certainly luxurious enough to use satin but I think cotton would ground it more and highlight that its vintage. I think im just going to have to buy both and sample it.
Front Fastening:
I want a Busk on the front of the corset, im happy with the straight busk Klein’s sell so no difficult choices there. Using them might be another matter, I never used a busk before but I think it should be similar to other techniques I have used.
Back Fastening:
This is the part that is challenging me…. I made a corset when I was 17, I was quite gothic so of course I used black velvet. It was not the most amazing corset but it greatest downfall was the lacing at the back. The tension of the laces was too much for the velvet, the eyelets started ripping out of the fabric. I did a few things wrong, I didn’t line the corset with anything, If I had used Couti or interfacing there would have been a lot more structural support. I only boned the seam channels so there was no boning to support the lacing. It was the first time I had used Eyelets, it certainly wasnt expert application.
Back to today; At the moment the back is fastened with Hook and Eye Tape which im going to remove so that the back can be laced at the back. Here is my first corset conundrum. I am very aware that this is an area of the corset that undergoes a lot of tension. I would really like to use eyelet boning as the first corset I made was in desperate need of more lacing structure. So If I use that I will have to make the eyelet hole directly into my vintage fabric. If I Fuck up here the corset is toast, no more fabric to make a new panel. So say I want to avoid this train wreck what my choices? I can use eyelet tape, If im using eyelet tape I can’t use eyelet boning, I can’t even put a boning channel either side; I can only bone one side of it. I need to think a bit about this one….
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