In more exciting news, for the first time in a little over three years I am working on a corset.  It is a bastard hybrid of stays with stomacher, and a Victorian corset.  It will be fully corded to imitate the look of fully boned stays, and I am planning for it to machine washable.

My design is very heavily inspired by these particular extant stays, which according to Isis’s Wardrobe, are English and dated to 1620-1640. It’s made out of linen and red silk satin and edged with pale blue silk ribbons, and is laced in the front over a boned stomacher.  The stays are in the Manchester Art Gallery Collections, which unfortunately at the time of writing this blog are not available online, so I cannot provide any further information or photos.

My corset is going to have “tabs” extending down from the body panels, with the hip spring entirely created with gores in a contrasting color.  The stomacher will be shaped with contours for the bust like in a Victorian or modern corset, and I am planning to include a small, stiff busk in a pocket on the inside of the stomacher.

This is the first time I will be cording a corset using the sewing machine entirely (as opposed to stitching the channels and then threading the cording through them), so you can expect a tutorial of some sort on that subject in the next couple months.  I probably will not have the energy to post many details while making the corset, as I have very little time left before NALACE, where I will be teaching a class.  I’ve gained a significant amount of weight in the past year, so none of my corsets fit right anymore.

There were only a couple small changes needed, so I won’t be making a second mock-up.  It needed to be taken in slightly at the front of the armhole, and needed to be lengthened significantly to achieve the look I want.

Project: Fully Corded Hybrid Style Corset