It's a good day to sew!

I feel bright as a button this morning. Despite a late night and waking up early to a shouty baby, the postman delivering my silk at 9.30 has cheered me up immensly. It means I can really motor on my designs as well as start the next wedding dress commission. Sometimes you just know its going to be a good day!

I was having a look back at my research from the Symington collection and on the Met museum website for some much needed enthusiasm. I'm also looking for a corset dated 1911-1912 in which to base a design for a competition (yes - I govern my success by acheived challenges) and I think it is time for me to give one of the Jenyns designs I have had my eye on for a while.

This is the drawing from my original research at the Symingtom collection. For more on this corset see my previous blog The beauty of Fan Lacing

This is D15, not a very glamorous name for such an awesome piece of corset engineering. Dated as 1911, this early Jenyns  no.9 model was licensed to be produced by the Symington Company but was invented and patented by Sarah Ann Jenyns, who with her husband ran a surgical instrument and corset company. Sarah also sold licenses to make Jenyns models in Canada, Germany and the USA.
This is one of the earliest Jenyns designs made by Symington but the Jenyns company still made corsets until late into the 1990's.

Here are some more detailed photo's from the corset. I particularly find interesting the look of fan lacing and the buckle attachment at the front. It has some pretty crazy inserts and seaming which I am going to have to figure out so it should be fun.

Source: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/jenyns-sarah-ann-10711