corselet part 2

Good Morning all,

Here is the latest catch up on how I'm getting on with trying to make control undies. I have to say that corsets are much easier to fathom without all this stretch business. You just sew your seams up and then control the amount of pull in with how tight you pull your laces, easy.

No need to worry about having the width tight enough to pull your stomach in the amount you want and still stretch over your hips when pulling up, which was kind of where we left off at the end of last week.  This week I have a good length of hook and eye tape to play with, so a merry widow is on the cards. Did anyone look it up? or did you all know what one was anyway? And plenty of blue powernet. The ebay seller I'm getting them off just has offcuts of set size (and sadly no ivory left).

Look at that nice nipped-in waist, now that's what I'm after.

To start I did the required stretch test to give me my negative easy and drafted up another corslet to try out this new material, not bad at all. Although I chose a bit of blue satin for the front panel that I had spare and it really does show off the differences between more expensive duchess satin and the cheaper stuff, One 'pull on' of the cheaper stuff and it is coming away at the seams, Not so the ivory duchess satin which has now been sewn into several different corselets, unpicked and sewn in again with a 'seam ripping try-on' on each one and no show of wear at all. I'm impressed, and so I unpicked it again to use in this next experiment, (The blue panel just went in the bin), the merry widow.

One thing I found on wearing this latest corselet round the house for a while was that my lower back started to ache, I can suffer from lower back problems so am quite careful most of the time.  The 50s style roll on corselet I have been trying to emulate is very low, covering bottom and hips to the tops of the legs, specially for those slink little black numbers to wiggle around in. For now I don't need that, so I flipped the lower portion up and instantly it felt better, and that really made the merry widow the underwear shape choice for now. I may make a pull-on corselet in the future and work on a way of doing so without anything risky to my back. And I really don't need that kind of pull in around the bottom area for the type of dress I am making now.

So first stage was to fold the blue powernet corselet in half down the centre back seam and cut off the bottom portion. 

Next I cut up the center back seam to allow me to insert the hook and eye tape.

I measured the amount that the hook and eye tape would add to the width of the garment and cut this off the centre back seam. The tape is really nifty stuff you enclose your raw seam inside two flaps on the eye side for a neat finish and

 the hook side flips over to seal the join. So on both side you have no mess and no need for a seam allowance, 

I cut another waist panel to give 3 x the elastic power at the waist area for extra pulling in and sewed it over the existing control panel.

Sewed the hook and eye tape in placed, and went for the first try on. Well, first mistake; when taking out the small amount of powernet from up the centre back I never considered negative easy, the hook and eye tape has no stretch, but the powernet does so the amount I removed when stretched was bigger than the width of the tape, but still able to be put on.

Putting on was a bit of a faf, I had to put it on backwards to see what I was doing with the hooks and eyes and then turn it round, not easy when so tight. The extra control panel really added extra control. 2 and 1/2 inch waist reduction, not bad, but it did have a tendency to fold in on itself. Straps are need in the bra area and also something at the bottom (suspenders) to hold it taut vertically. I guess my bottom was doing this job before.

Ok so on with the bra bit. I decided not to go with the cups I had made before as they would need underwiring to give support, I will go more into this subject in another post, but for now I draft some soft bra options that I have used before under the guidance of 'Foundations Revealed" and sewed them in place. (I'm still not quite  finished with the wedding dress top half so don't really know what style I need to make sure it won't be peaking out).

But here are the cups in place, and I used the traditional fixing for the bra strap at the back

Trying it on I'm quite pleased, the cups are ok and supportive enough. The waist is well cinched, and I would wear it out, under something obviously. But not yet as you can see there is a little finishing still needed. I am trying to source some plush hem elastic locally, but will be back on the internet by the looks of it, and the suspender bits need adding on. And once I have finished the wedding dress I can draft a lovely one using this as a template for my wedding. 

 

All good then with just over 6 weeks to go, I think I'll manage (and if it all goes horribly wrong I can always go to town and buy myself something).  Well that's all from me for this week, it may be a couple of week before the next update on undies, with other things to do, but don't worry there will be a wedding task update next week, you can be sure of that.

So keep well everyone.

Hugs and Kisses

Ally