Somewhere in the Victorian era, people started coming up with ideas for making corsets more comfortable to wear. Gigglishiously ironical though that may sound, some great innovations came out of it. One of my favs is the single layer corset – no lining, no interlining, just a base layer of fabric and some boning. If you do outdoor events in the summer, it’s a trick worth adapting. (“It’s period! It’s just not quite your period, dear rennie…” says the voice of evil. Heh. ;) )
14 CommentsSkill Level: Intermediate
The first steel, front-fastening busk was invented in 1829. (Waugh, 79) They’re nifty little beasties, especially at the end of the day when you would really, sincerely like to be OUT of your ding-dang corset. I’ve hear rumors that they can be used to get into a pre-tightened corset, as well, but I’ve tried, and I’m clearly missing a clue or two there. :/ The clue I do have is in how to insert the little buggers. Interested?
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Ok, so you know I’m gonzo about le moulage, right? It’s basically a princess line dress, with no ease. That makes it a pretty accurate model of a specific human’s torso. But what the heck do I do with that information? I’m working with two remote clients right now, and they’ve sent me back their moulages (with notes – nothing is perfect the first go). For Haley, I need to draft a regency style corset for her Elizabeth Bennet inspired dress. Here’s how to go from Moulage (or any other princess-line sloper you’ve got handy) to the least moulage like thing I can think of – an 1820s corset. ;)
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So, for the next installment in the series, I’ll tackle the character of Germaine in Picasso at the Lapin Agile. (Wowza, did that sound pretensious…) The rough inspiration for the costume was, “How would Miss Piggy do Steampunk?” This one is slightly more complex than the Admirer, but still pretty easy to wrangle out of resale…
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Have I mentioned that my show has, by and large, come from Goodwill? Yes, indeed. One of the characters in 1776 is “a courier”. (No, really, that’s all they call him in the script.) He’s an army courier who brings messages in to the continental congress. I need him to look like he’s a) military and b) really, really dirty. This means that I get to build the coat, and then I get to have a bit of fun with it…
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Oddly enough, I needed 19 pair of Colonial britches to go with my 25 Colonial vests. (Because I had much better luck renting britches than vests, not because I let anyone go pantless.) This is very similar to the trick I used for the Oliver! knickers, but they need a slimmer fit and different length. It goes like this:
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I needed 25 Colonial-looking vests for 1776. Because I wasn’t sure that I’d get round to making a coat for everyone, I wanted vests that weren’t faked out in the back, and I needed them to have structure and to be long enough to cover the obviously modern fly fronts on the britches I was making them. Now, you can’t just trot off to the Goodwill and buy a real live Colonial vest. But you can pull off something passable, if you believe that that there are, in fact, user-serviceable parts inside of a jacket….
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I’m a huge fan of shoe roses (aka, “shoe hoo-ha-s”, “shoe hooters”, “shoe dec”, etc). Whatever you want to call the silly little things, I love them. Seriously, little hats for shoes? Tee! Put me in, coach! They just make me giggle… If you need to period-up a shoe with a strap across the foot (like a mary jane or t-strap style dance shoe), here’s a quick and dirty way to build a shoe rose that is relatively actor-proof…
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We all know how to make a corset, right? Take a bodice pattern that’s too small, sew a lot of boning channels in it, a little jiggery-pokery to get the boning in, seal the edges, and presto change-o, corset. And that’s great, but it’s not the only way to make a corset. Well, ok, if you want to get all technical, then that is the only way to make a corset, but it’s not the only way to make a pair of stiffened bodies capable of supporting the body and forming it onto a conical shape. Here’s another method that relies on stiff sheets of interlining, rather than multiple thin bones.
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Sometimes, you need to sew a chemise and you don’t really want to spend a lot of time on it. Either you’re out of time, or the thought of sewing just one more chemise in your life inspires a sense of soul-crushing despair. Anyway, I’ve worked out a couple tricks over the years to get the stupid things sewn as quickly as possible, with a bare minimum of hand work, so that they still come out looking decent.
Warning: I’m about to go through a lot of things that are simply not best practices. (That’s why it’s called cheating.)
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