Good Morning All
I hope this lovely autumn morning finds you well, I have to say I am loving the weather here in England at the moment, crisp in the mornings but warm during the day and so sunny.
I've taken my leave of ties for awhile and am now concentrating on my underwear, which I know you all love to hear about.
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one of my attempts |
Mark Garbarczyk from the lovely Foundations Revealed website has a couple of articles on how to make a corselet and control panels and having avidly followed his bra making articles I thought I would give it a go and use the resulting 'masterpiece' under my wedding dress as opposed to a corset which might be a bit uncomfortable after so many hours and always has the disadvantage of pushing your bust up to your chin when you sit down, not a look I want for my wedding day!


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You can see the extra seam at the top |
But anyway I got it all together and popped upstairs to try it on all excited. Not good! You should have heard all the stitches popping as I pulled this poor abused item up over my hips. I say pulled it was more tugged, yanked, swore over. There are no photos for this bit. I got it on, but the effect was not what I had hoped for, but then I looked again and realised for a first attempted it wasn't too bad. It did actually pull me in in the middle quite a bit which was the desired result, I just need to work on it abit.
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My seam after stretching. |
Listen to Mark and set the stitch length to as small as possible, this is how it copes with the stretching.
Don't try to make a finished article straight off, this is something I really struggle with in everything I sew, I add all the trimming hoping that it will miraculously work and I will be wearing out that night. Never does. I really should know. But if it had worked then I would have to take it apart to add the nice bits like seam tape etc.

And buy enough material for the pattern the less unneeded seams the better. Hard this when you can't draft the pattern till you get the material???
The reason why it was such hard work to get on and so tight, was my control panel, an extra piece of powernet the runs around the waist area, to get it nice and tight on the waist, to give you a good pull in, you have to make it small and hence its a real problem stretching over your hips. A merry widow might be the way around this, although I was hoping for a pull on. If you don't know what a merry widow is, google it or tune in next time when I'll go it to it in more detail.
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waist control panel |
I needed more powernet before being able to continue with my experiments, I found some really thin stuff at a local material shop, but it doesn't really have the strenght, and I also tried a version with lycra, but it no really strength and quite thick so therefore warm. Back to the internet and as I know now the ebay shop had the right stuff, I have bought and am waiting impatiently for the arrival of a much larger piece of good strong powernet, so more of this to come.
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made with lycra, too stretchy and too thick |
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made with lightweight powernet, more like a thick pair of tights |
Also I have order a length of hooks and eyes that mean I can now have a go at drafting a 'merry widow' and then have a really tight waist, but more on that next time.
Hugs and Kisses
Ally
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