On a roll sewing today

In the previous post I was banging on about a Jenyns corset that I really love and want to have a go at, that was this morning.

So after I had seen all my clients today I set about putting that into motion. I found a 1911 corset pattern in the corset makers tome Corsets and Crinolines by Norah Waugh so that I could wrap my head around what shape corset was in vogue at the time. Unfortunately I don't have a photocopier or it would have made drafting the pattern a 20min exercise instead of an hour.

I always find it interesting to lay my pieces down and visualise the final shape it will force the body into:

I can see from here that my pattern piece 2 could do with being a little shorter and actually that the hip shaping is done through the triangular pieces and that the corset is designed to contour the bottom into a more streamline shape. I think this corset is also much shorter than I thought it would be, but I am absolutely sure that I have worked it from the book pretty well so my deduction is that this corset is designed for a woman shorter than the modern average woman. The truth will be in the mock up.

Mock up:

I admit that I hammered my way through this really quickly just to see the effect, so please forgive the slightly shonkyness...I'll be fixing that tomorrow, and putting the boning channels in for a proper test. After initial musings on this design on the dummy it looks like it has some very strange proportion thing going on so I will fix my little front seam boo up, and I think I will actually try it on me as I am both short and squishy and maybe I will get a better idea of exactly what this corset is trying to achieve.

Also today I have been putting stuff up on my wall to inspire me: