Before I can do aught else I must make me my underpinnings, for without them to measure over I cannot hope to make the overgarments fit.
Making corsets kinda sucks. But is also amazing. Because a properly fitting corset is so comfortable, and flattering, and delightful. But making them is fiddly and needly breaky and hard work.
As previously mentioned I am starting with the Symington Pretty Housemaid corset (https://imageleicestershire.org.uk/view-item?i=7559) which has patterns available online.
It looks like this:
It is largely corded, with a steel busk and two bones on each side. The Leicestershire museum states "The corset is made from a green/brown twill which has been lined with a beige coutil and interlined with hessian." I will make mine from cotton, lined with cotton, because I like cotton. I am thinking about the options for interlining and may actually use hessian, it is a good, strong and relatively cheap fabric.
The original pattern looks like this:
I however do not. I have a very short body and a large bust as well as being fat. My measurements are only 11 inches from the mid-bust line where the top of a Victorian corset should sit, to the bottom of where it can sit without cutting into my thighs or riding up, I am debating whether to go for a 10" or 11" busk. I am 50 inches round the unconfined bust, 40 inches round the waist and 45 inches round the hip. On the upside, to get the 10 inch variance that would be truly fashionable for the era I could simply pad out my hips and look like a tall Victorian lady someone dropped a heavy weight on.
Initially I measured my body, the height between each line is also measured and accurate. The black line is the full circumference and the green is the front. I separated these measurements as simply getting something that goes round me and cutting it in half does not put the seams at my sides, they sit much further forward.
Overlaying the two is a crude measure but demostrates the scale of the pattern changes needed:
So firstly I simply squashed the pattern to the correct height for me:
Then I started to reshape it for me. If you want a strictly historical silhouette you may be more cautious about this, but I have decided, at least for the first mock up, I am going to design it to fit exactly me in a sports bra. So a bit of uplift on the boobs but no compression of the waist. Once I have tested that, I will decide just how much tighter I want it to be and where to take the space out of.
A major concern when changing the pattern is that the exact layout of the pieces is very important. It is what enables the corset to be cut appropriately across the straight grain and the bias in order to achieve the right give and take. I have done my best to maintain the shape with tips from the lovely Bernadette Banner here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhc05WtISV4.
The result is this:
I have left the original lines in lighter colours and my new ones are in green.
As you can see it no longer fits quite as nicely on the page in a jigsaw fashion but it should hopefully maintain the grain angles relatively well. Most of the pieces are a similar shape excxept for D, and the back edge of F which are very different. I am not sure about that. I think many mock ups and re-works will be required.
The next step will be to draft out the pattern on wrapping paper, which will be a challenge, then make a mock up and see what happens...
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