New Corset: Circulatory System

So, I've had an idea for a while, to do some kind of weird/awesome/creepy/biological embroidery on a corset. It'd be something that looked cool enough I could wear it as a bodice (steampunk, ftw) but would lie flat enough that I could wear it under a real bodice for a ballgown (which will become relevant as soon as I have a ballgown. I'm working on it, people. Seriously.

Anyway, I woke up this morning thinking "I want to make something." And what else to do on a crafty Sunday afternoon than embroider a corset?

I was going to use a Drosophila (fly, for all you non-biologists) wing as inspiration, because the veins have this cool pattern. I thought I could even use the boning channels as guides, or something.

Biology is beautiful! But it doesn't look much like a corset. Imagine it rotated ninety degrees. It still doesn't look much like a corset. Well, I'd figure something out.

But I wasn't sure how I would do it, and in any case I wasn't sure the idea was perfect, so I did a quick search for embroidered corsets and I found this one done by Laura Vickerson:

Isn't that just amazing?

You should check out her website, because it is full of awesome things. http://www.lauravickerson.com/?projectid=03&catid=02

Aim for the moon, right? When I miss, I'll end up in the stars.

To start, I used the same old pattern (Laughing Moon #100: Ladies' Victorian Underwear) without any alterations. So, trace and cut out:

I can has pattern pieces!

And then comes the fun part. I didn't want to just free-hand the embroidery, in part because I'm bad at free-handing things and in part because I've never done embroidery before (why did I think this was a good idea, again? Oh, yeah, because beautiful and creepy.) So I sketched it out on the pattern pieces. In order to differentiate between right and left sides (I can't have symmetry, after all, the circulatory system isn't symmetric!) I used two colors.

It's half pattern, half sketch! Turns out I can almost draw squiggles when I'm using a pencil!

Close-up. You can totally tell that there are brown lines and black lines, right? No? Well.

So, then I was tired and hungry. So it was time for a burritto. This is an absolutely essential step. When you are making corsets, it is easy to forget to eat (after all, how else will you get that 15-inch waistline?). But the last thing you want is to faint with a needle in your hand. I guess unless you like puncture wounds.

Or maybe just tasty.

Anyway, after lunch, which was delicious, it was on to cutting the pattern out. I'm using a cream-colored satin, because I have loads of it and don't know what to do with it, and also because it's a neutral enough color that the red will really stand out against it.

I think I shall make a bustle with the rest. One can never have too many bustles.

Now, all those fancy squiggles that I drew might be something that someone else (read: someone with actual talent) could replicate on the fabric just by looking at them. But I'm mostly incompetent, so I needed to trace. And since I don't have a light table (what, do you think I'm a real artist? Hah.) I used a west-facing window. It totally worked!

In the background; my patio. It is full of green things. In the foreground, something to trace?

Now, the first corset I made was just one layer of coutil and one of a pattern, and it wore out ridiculously easy. That's part of the reason I'm making this one; so I can figure out how to patch that one in an aesthetically pleasing manner. (Turns out it's hard to patch a corset when you're wearing it.) So I vowed that from then on, I would always use two layers of coutil, and flat-line the top layer. Which means, more cutting!

My hands hurt already and there's still one layer of coutil to go.

On a side note, coutil is magical. No, seriously. All that metal that people put into corsets? Doesn't help narrow your waist, it just sort of smooths you out. All the squish-power is done by the coutil, pretty much. As far as I can tell, it's stronger than steel. Might even take a bullet. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest, of course. I never exaggerate. What I'm trying to say is that coutil sees your body and says "You have fat/organs/bone that usually take up that space? Too bad, move aside!"

Which I guess is what you want, when you're making a corset.

Anyway, I knew I was going to be handling these pieces like mad, so after I lined them (read: sewed them together) I finished the edges. Because fraying does not make a good corset, I don't think.

You can see my markings! Those are for embroidery!

 Now, the problem here is that I'm a bit impatient. And sewing two identical pieces to each other isn't particularly interesting work. So about halfway through I got bored, and had a drink, and started thinking about this embroidery stuff and how I was going to manage that.

It's just juice. I swear! Although drunken embroidery would probably be more fun?

It turns out that I'm bad at embroidery. I mean, really really bad. And not in the way I expected. I can get pretty even stitching, because I spent quite a bit of time working on that for hand-sewing things. But most of the thread I use is manufactured for high tensile strength. And embroidery floss is like, seriously, the flimsiest stuff ever.

What's this? More floss on the table than on the fabric? That's right!

I guess it also turns out that my linebacker-esque upper body strength, which serves me well when I'm doing things like climbing ropes and suspending myself upside down (more often than you'd think), isn't too useful when I'm trying to ease cotton balls through one layer of coutil and one of satin. Especially since the coutil spends all of its time shouting "I WILL NOT YIELD TO YOUR FLIMSY NEEDLE!"

Or... something.

But! Eventually it got better! And I only used, like, 36 inches of embroidery floss to get from the image above to this one:

Gentle... gentle... gennnntle..... SHIT!

Hopefully it'll look half as awesome as I want it to. I'll post results as soon as I have them. And in the meantime, leave me alone. I have a lot of embroidery to do.

(EDITED to add the inspiration picture. Also to note that I am totally getting better at this embroidery thing! I can go 18 inches without breaking the floss. That means I have graduated to barely competent!)

Inaugural Post: Blue-jean bustle

So... Paula made this awesome blue-jean bustle skirt for Steamcon last year. And I am a copycat. Well, sort of.

I don't even have a picture of hers, because I am lame, but she must. Or she could take one. And maybe I can get her to post it. That'd be sweet.

But! I have in-progress and completed pictures for mine, which is almost as awesome. (Read:It started with a couple pairs of pants that were so worn out I felt bad every time I wore them:

There was a pair of black ones too that I thought about using to make the whole thing a skirt, like Paula's, but I didn't end up doing it because, well, the bustle stood on its own well enough. Also, I couldn't bring myself to cut apart the green shiny pants, because who doesn't need a pair of green shiny pants, even if they're like ten years old and show the wear? (Note to self: Make a pair of green satin cargo pants, so you can finally retire those.)

Anyway, I resolved on the blue jeans and the corduroy for the bustle, and I made it into three layers. The bottom, longest, is both legs of the cords, sewn up the middle and gathered up:

The second, middle layer, is one leg of the blue jeans, pleated at the top. These are horizontal, so it's significantly shorter and slightly wider than the corduroy layer.

The puff is just the other leg of the blue jeans, tied into a circle. The massaging here was to get both sides to be the same width, since the jeans flare out, and tying the knot tight enough that it doesn't look, well, lame. 

A bow helps. I ended up putting a button in the center of the bow, too, mostly just because I could.

Er, then it's just a matter of sewing them all together and keeping them mostly centered. Cords to first blue-jean layer:

And then add the puff.

I'm skimming over part of it - which is the waist band. I ended up using the waist band for the corduroy pants, and reattatching it as the bottom-most layer. Since I wanted this to sit a bit higher on my waist than the cords usually did, I needed to take the waist band in slightly. And I don't have pictures, because that was the hard part/the part I hadn't planned, so it involved a lot of futzing with the waist band and the dress form and pinning and trying it on and then replacing everything and frowning at it because it didn't look right. 

But! All put-together, here's how it looked on the dress form!

And here's how it looked on me, at, Nova Albion. You can see a couple of the St. Clair Aeronauts in the background. And you can see my striped corset and matching spats on me.  Unfortunately, I made those so long ago that I don't have pictures of the process.

This was my third-ish attempt at bustle-ry. I really love the idea (which I can't take any credit for - Paula is the genius behind it), and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. The problem with it is, since it's designed to be worn as a top layer (otherwise the bow wouldn't show and the puff would get squished) it tends to fly everywhere when I'm dancing. We were swing dancing that night, and seriously it ended up around at my stomach sometimes.

Of course, that music was super fast, so sometimes my corset got jostled out of alignment as well. It's not too surprising the bustle took a hit.