The first corset I ever made, back in 2015, has always been one of my favourites.
But, it’s also never really been wearable. Partly the fit wasn’t great, but the biggest glitch was my failure to properly bone the outer edge of the back lacing, which made it impossible to lace very tightly; it was also a bit big, though entering my 40s has fixed that problem for me. And as my bust has, ah, improved over the last few years, the upper edge went from not-quite-mid-bust to awkwardly low. There was nothing like enough hip or bust spring, either. So it’s been sadly awaiting a makeover for quite a long time.
I’m a bit between projects right now and a little too burnt out to tackle anything big, so I made myself start mindlessly seam ripping.
Fortunately I had the rest of the fabric still in stash, since I needed to add gussets to the hip and cut new binding for the top and bottom, as well as adding a casing to the lacing edge.
Removing the binding took the longest (well, except for adding the binding back on). I had to take off the lace along the top as well, and removed one of the carefully scatter of artful lace flowers that were pretty much my favourite feature of the corset, and I should probably reposition more of them, but we’ll see if that happens.
That being said, it really didn’t take nearly as much time as I thought it might. The original corset was layered over a white denim, but for the new additions I layered the fashion fabric over some bits of ticking, which is much more corset-appropriate. It’s a little thinner but this isn’t a big problem for the gussets.
Once I had the binding off I seam-ripped the bottom half of the side seam, drafted up a gusset shape to fill in that space, and marked where I thought the under bust curve should go. (I also ripped WAY up one side trying it on to get an idea of how big the hip gussets should be, and had to hand-stitch it back together, which worked surprisingly well. Here’s hoping if it works for 18th century stays it’ll work for me.
The result is a much curvier underbust corset—maybe not as historical, but it wasn’t really good at that anyway.
I think it’ll be much more useful as a cute outerwear piece than it was before.
And it was always a bit showy for underwear.
So yeah. Quick project. Very satisfying.
Tanit-Isis Sews 