Hello everyone,
It is a week since the WorldCon Glasgow Masquerade and I am close to getting my energy back!
I had a fantastic time meeting everyone backstage (Go Den 4!) and I have been well and truly bitten by the Cosplay bug, so keep an eye out for me at masquerades in the future – though probably only WorldCons when they come to this corner of the world. Some of you might be up to globe-trotting to follow the con to every host city, but I am not quite that adventurous!
Unfortunately, because things were a bit rushed towards the end, I didn’t get to show off all the details of my costume, so I thought I would try and do one of those costume blog things and write some posts about what I did.
To begin with, I’ll start with the corset, since it was both the easiest and hardest thing to do.
That’s because this was a customised corset rather than one I made from the ground up. I did start making a corset, but I only got a few steps in to making the first toile when I realised that I hated it and that I would rather work on nearly any other part of the costume than that. So I went looking in my collection of costume pieces that don’t fit but I bought them in the pandemic so I couldn’t return them and pulled out a corset that fit none of my measurements but which I had a feeling I could bodge together.
The corset was way too large in the bust, far too narrow in the hips, and, it turned out, a pinch too large in the waist. I had no idea the waist was so close until I had gotten everything else to fit, but that’s getting ahead of myself.
First I began by stripping off the binding from the bottom of the corset. This was surprisingly difficult because the thread was very strong and I could only get a few stitches at a time, so it took forever. I would cut the thread with my embroidery scissors, in some cases having to actually dig into the fabric a wee bit to draw it out, and then try to pull the pieces apart. I would get about a cm at a time before I would have to cut some more, and that was when it went quickly! There were some bits of the binding where I had to cut each stitch as I went to get it off the corset. And then, of course, I had to do the other side of that first piece of binding AND the other length of binding on the other corset piece. That was one of the toughest things about the corset, for everything that took forever and exhausted me, I had to do it all again on the other side.
But once the binding was off both pieces I removed the hip gores that were there to give a bit of flare to the bottom of the corset. However, I do wonder at the proportions of this corset because, given the seam allowances and everything, I’m not sure these hip gores actually gave much flare to the shape at all. There were two on each side, but after trying it on, I realised that even with gaping holes where the gores had once been, there still wasn’t enough room for my hips! So I cut another pair on the back, one on each side, right over the butt. Thankfully that meant there was now enough room for me to actually fit in the darn thing.
However, the worst part was still to come: I had to finish the live edge that was already doing its best to fray apart. I tried with a couple of different bindings, but I had to go for the ridiculously thick one I mostly bought to make apron ties with. Nothing else was wide enough to go over all the layers! And oh my gosh that fabric! Corsets have to be made out of a specially tough fabric because of the strain they are put under, and sewing through it is a pain in the . . . well the hands and the neck to be honest. I should have used a sewing machine, really, but with the metal boning, I was just a bit too scared.
So what I ended up doing instead was getting some extra strong double-sided-stick-tape and using that to hold the binding on. Where the fabric allowed I also whip stitched, but mostly that was one bit of binding to another, rather than to the fabric itself. The tape I got is very sturdy, and is meant for fabric so it should hold together, but I do wish that I had been able to sew the binding on properly.
I also swapped out one of the pairs of bones from the front of the corset. The original boning had gone over the bust, but that pulled it into a very strange shape, so I found a smaller metal bone and inserted it into the channel so it stopped under the bust instead. That way it wasn’t making any weird Madonna-style pointy bits.
At that point I had a mostly functional corset, however when I put the laces back in I discovered that with my adaptions the laces now weren’t nearly long enough. Well truth be told they never had been, but now it was incredibly obvious so I couldn’t put off getting new laces. I bought an excessive amount of white parachute cord off Etsy, safe in the knowledge that it would never break on me because I was definitely not as strong as gravity, and parachutes have to work with that.
So I laced it up and tried it on again, only to be once more reminded that I do not have the proportions of a fashionable Victorian lady OR a comic femme fatale. So time to borrow from history and pad out the bust! That was easily done, a couple of fabric circles folded in half and then sewn up with teddy bear stuffing giving the necessary cushioning. It’s very comfortable and does everything that is necessary.
And so the corset was done. This took forever and nearly killed my hype because of all the extremely tough fabric I had to sew through. I like sewing by hand, but not when every stitch is a fight with the fabric.
But I had to do it, corsets are so necessary for the Victorian look. Not just because they help you achieve the shape, but because the skirts and petticoats are really blooming heavy and if you don’t have something there to support them you will get bruises from the weight.
I basked in the knowledge that I was done with this onerous task and joyously moved on to other things, in this case, the chemise and bloomers. But you will have to wait until next week to hear about that!
Stay safe out there,
K
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