The Pink Corset

Hello everyone! Welcome back to my channel. Today I am very excited to share with you a project that has been a long time in the making but I finally have finished it and it turned out absolutely gorgeous. The most perfectly finished project I've done thus far. This beautiful 1860s pink corset. Let's get started. So if you have not seen the champagne corset make sure you check it out real quick. I'll have a link to that video in the description below. That was the first step in 1860s corset project. About a year ago or so I was texting my cousin Jo. She and I both share a love of historical fashions and crafting so we decided that we were going to do kind of a swap sort of project. So she was going to make a tea gown for me and I was going to make a corset for her. And it took a little bit of careful thought about what era of corset we should make. I was willing to try pretty much anything but I also wanted it to be something that she could use. She does a lot of living history from the late 1700s to the mid to late 1800s. However she doesn't really have a corset for the 1860s or much beyond that. Her latest one I think was a 1830s corset which has quite a different shape. That's a little bit closer to what you would see in the regency period. It's kind of a little bit of a morph between that and what you'd see later in the 1800s. So we decided that I was going to work on some 1860s corsets and we had both decided that we were going to bite off the rather sizable task of making each of us one of each. So she'd be making two tea gowns and I'd be making two corsets. And I'm kind of glad we decided to do that because the champagne corset was definitely necessary for learning a few things. So to quickly recap what happened and to add in a little bit of missing information. Since we decided on an 1860s corset I did a little bit of research on 1860s patterns. A lot of corsets nowadays are not going to be shaped quite the same way even if they're like recreations that are trying to be kind of similar. I really wanted to have something from the period to work off of so we could have the right end silhouette. And it was kind of hard to find some but I did find one in this book by Jill Salen. She has this beautiful red and black corset that is very simple. It is from the right time period and all the panels are pretty much straight up and down. There's no hip panels or anything. But it's a really good place for me to get started because it's a really simple pattern so I can put it together and then cut apart and do something different. So since I do like doing things in the most difficult way possible I wanted to find a corset pattern on the internet, just an image that I could kind of base it off of a little bit. And I found this gorgeous blue corset that was in the Victorian Albert Museum from 1864. And it's got this really dramatic shape on the hip panels and it's just gorgeous with this huge wall of bones and everything. This will definitely create a shape. So I decided to take these pattern pieces and turn them into a design like this. And to do that I basically just tape all the paper pieces together and then I draw on where I want the new seam lines and I cut it out and I modify it until it kind of sits flat. And with the champagne corset I did take a little bit of curve out of the hip panels thinking that it would help them lay a little more loosely. It worked okay. I also only did two layers with that champagne corset. I only did like the inner cotton layer and then the outside chrysanthemum silk layer or the fashion fabric. And it worked fine. Like there's something really wrong with it. The fit I didn't end up being perfectly happy with. It was quite a bit too big and you can see that in the reveal like especially right here. You can see how it's really poking out from my back on the top and the bottom. And you can also see in the front that for some reason the busk lined up but like the top and bottom of the panels didn't line up. I have no idea how I did that. But I did use that pattern to do a fitting with my cousin just to see how it would fit her since the mock-up really did fit me quite well. And it worked almost perfectly. Thankfully our sizes are quite similar. Our bust measurement is just a little bit different so we can do a lot of like swapping as far as making sure that it at least generally fits. So that was very very helpful. So the pattern worked great. We decided to move forward with that and then I ended up modifying the champagne corset a little bit after I already finished and polished the video. I moved the lacing strips out a little bit. So I basically took out about a centimeter or so on either side of the back panels just to make it fit a little bit more snugly. I still close it all the way down which is not the way I would like it. My back, my spine has a little bit of a twist in it so having bones right up against my spine is not super comfortable. I do like having at least an inch or two of space between the lacing strips so that wasn't ideal. Also for some reason these lacing strips, I know they're meant for mock-ups and things, but they were not very sturdy. With just a little bit of lacing and stuff some of the grommets started popping out which was not great. I also took out the busk loop side and just moved it about a half an inch and it fit just fine. So it's definitely usable. It's better than it was in the video. But there were some things about the design and the pattern pieces that I didn't quite like. The hip panels didn't really look as smooth and flattering as they did on the blue corset. There's something about the way they made those hip panels that's super super smooth and I couldn't quite figure that out. Also the back, it wasn't doing a whole lot for me. I had only the picture of the front of the blue corset to get some ideas from but I didn't find back picture at that time. So I just made it up and it wasn't great. It wasn't terrible. It wasn't amazing. I didn't like that the hip panel had been added on top of the front panels so the front panels were behind it. I wanted it to be more like this so that was another thing that I wanted to change. That's like more in the making. But in the actual corset itself there was something off about the pattern pieces because in the front on either side the bones kind of poked out a little bit right where they connected in the hip panels and that's definitely not ideal. Like it's not a huge problem but I really wanted to just find a way to make it a little bit more smooth. Oh also the corset looked weirdly long. This was the same length as the black and red corset from the corsets book but it didn't quite look right. The proportion of like hip panel to the rest of it didn't seem quite perfect. Also the bust gores that I had inserted, so basically I had all the bones cut out from the fabric like this and then I would split it open and insert a gore for the bust which is kind of what it looks like in the picture. But it was a huge pain and already just from having worn it a few times the point where there really wasn't much fabric to work with was starting to fray and come apart a little bit. I just did not want to do it that way. So I put this project aside for a little while. I wanted to have it done by June so that I could have the video up in July but also because in the middle of June we had a family event where we were all going to be in the same state at the same time so that seemed like a really good time to have it done by. And eventually I was like okay we're just going to start from scratch. We're going to use the same black and white corset pattern. We're not going to touch the previous pattern at all like the champagne corset pattern. We're just going to start from scratch. I've been kind of making it from scratch going back to the original references. I went ahead and printed them out this time and I found a picture for the back of it which I did not have before. And again when I printed this out I'm like really blown up. You could see how smooth those hip panels were and I just did not get that effect with the champagne corset. So I thought about it for a while. I didn't quite know what I was going to do but I did plan on having the hip panels be made from two pieces instead of one. That way we could keep the little extra curve that was right down there at the bottom. Also I ended up taking quite a bit of length off especially on the sides which emphasized that really dramatic front shape and I liked the vibe of that a bit more and it seemed to match the picture quite a bit better. So while I was redesigning I happened upon a few little happy accidents. One of which was I managed to actually end up with fewer panels on the top and I'm not quite sure how I managed to do that. I think because I was a lot more of a stickler for really having that hip panel come up high enough. I think that made a big difference. On the side it really is where I wanted the skinniest part of the waist to be so I didn't have any extra curves at the bottom of the top panels. So that was nice. So I threw together a mock-up real quick and I was immediately obsessed. Forgive the mess over here. I'm in the middle of like four different projects but I did just finish this second corset mock-up. So let's see how this looks. There aren't any bones in it but I did put the lacing on at this time um just because I wanted to see how that would work and because I think that this will be significantly smaller than the last one. So we're gonna try this on and again even though this one is for Miss Jo we do have very similar uh sizes. Oh my goodness but look at that shape! Oh my goodness this is cute! Okay yes this is my asymmetry I think coming to bite us here. Actually that's not too bad. Hang on a second I need to put my glasses on so I can see better. Oh yeah my glasses by the way. Okay so we could definitely take it in a bit. I might go ahead and do that today. Just move the lacing strips in a bit here and there. Also they are buckling because there's no bones in them. I can't really see but I will say this is so cute. It was kind of crazy how much of a difference there was between the two mock-ups even though they were made basically out of the same design. Now this second mock-up I wanted to have two mock-ups at the same time and for this one I was just using the flask that I was going to use for the final product but I didn't have an extra one. Since I knew I was probably going to want to have one of these uh new patterned corsets for myself I went ahead and sacrificed my first corset that I had made which was basically a mock-up to use as spare parts. Of course I had to do it very dramatically. Anyways so I took that one apart. I used as much material as I could from it and I made the second mock-up which was definitely an improvement. The bust fit quite a bit better and the length seemed perfect so I went ahead and got started on the final. So one of the main things from the initial champagne corset that I really wanted to change was just the strength of it because I'd only had some stiff cotton on the inside and then the layer of fashion fabric on the outside and I just did not feel like that was quite enough for it to really feel structurally sound. So I ended up doing three layers this time. I kept the outer two the same and on the inside I just added some of this blue fabric that I've been using for a bunch of different things including mock-ups and hats. As I was playing around with things I knew I wanted to include a little bit of lace somewhere whether just at the top or something I didn't really know so I messed around with a bunch of different lace options that I had in my stash. I actually printed out pictures of the lace and kind of did paper dolls to like line things up and try out a bunch of color combinations and that worked great. I highly recommend this kind of prototyping because that way you're not actually wasting any of your real fabric but you still get to see generally what it would look like and I decided upon this beautiful lace right here that I really had not much of it all about this wide but it was so pretty I knew I wanted to use it somehow. So I decided that instead of having lace at the top I was just gonna have lace on hip panels because I really liked that little like crawling design and I thought that would be really pretty to have on the hips. So once I had my pieces ready I went ahead and added the bust which is, I don't know, it's kind of complicated the first time you do it but it really starts to make sense and I was really super careful about making sure that the pieces lined up properly before I sewed it in this time because I really didn't want to change that later because it was a big thing. Partway through this I decided I wanted it to have french seams. I have no idea what possessed me but I didn't want to do any external bones and so I ended up with like cording basically on all of the major seams. I'm sorry what did I just do? I just did a french seam on our corset but this way I didn't have to do any external boning channels which was amazing. Everything is internal boning which worked out beautifully. It ended up so smooth and I made the french seams as tiny as I could and it worked perfectly. Like there's a little bit of a lump but when you put it on you really don't miss it at all. But partway through this process I decided I was going to actually add some stuffing to the hip panels. Now I don't know if this was a common practice at all but I figured that was going to be the only way I could really get those hip panels to lay as smooth as they did in the picture. And if we zoom in over here on the hip panels themselves you can see right here you can see that seam on the side of the hip panels which matched up quite nicely to what I was doing and they're just they're so smooth. I have no idea how you'd be able to get this shape that smooth without some kind of really interesting technique or stuffing. Now it's quite common in like past 1860s to use a hip pad like especially once you get into the 1880s 90s and the early 1900s you would definitely have padding on your hips but usually that was a separate accessory that was basically just a little pillow that you would tie around your waist and it would just add a little bit more oomph in the back. But I had never really heard of someone actually stuffing a corset itself to create this look but it just it made sense so I went ahead and did it. Then I added it under the corset top section that I had already added some bias tape to as a nice finished edge so I could just add it to the inside. Then I covered up the inside raw edge with a bit of waist tape. It worked really well to have that extra strengthening layer right at that edge and I don't know if it's that that helped the bones to lay more flat or whether it was just because they were able to be on top I'm not quite sure but it didn't seem like that front problem was there this time. So the one last thing that I needed to do before I was able to like add the bones and everything was the the lacing in the back and I kind of saved this decision until the very end but I decided I was not going to use lacing strips even though that was originally the plan. After seeing how they were falling apart so quickly on the champagne corset I decided I really wanted to just go ahead and do grommets properly so I had to purchase the tools to do that. I got the smallest size they had available I still feel a little big but it worked. It took a bit of trial and error the instructions were not really meant I think for this size of grommet because the hole puncher you couldn't just do it on its own uh or you would destroy your rubber mallet you actually had to like put the grommet setting tool on top of the hole puncher and then hammer that which the instructions said nothing about but we didn't manage to figure out a way to make it work. I actually took it outside and was working on this while my daughter was running around on the playground so that worked out great. It did not take quite as long as I was expecting it to it was certainly a process and my arms were very sore afterwards but it ended up working and I was really happy with it. So before I added the bones and added the uh edging and everything I wanted to go ahead and try it on real quick just to see if it worked at all. Okay so this isn't quite done yet but um look at how perfect this fits. The top fits perfect. This part is just ridiculous. Look at this incredible hip spring. Like the back yes it's a pretty wide opening but honestly for me with a little bit of a twist I think this is totally gonna be more comfortable. Of course it's not mine I have to keep refining myself that this one's not mine but um this has gotta be the most beautiful thing I have ever made. Look at that wall of bones. Look at how the whole top like looks like it's one piece. This perfectly smooth line like obviously you've got you know the little stretch wrinkles in here and stuff and that's normal but like this wall right here just just real quick let me show you this has not completely gotten rid of my waist. Like I'm gonna bet this is still 27. Look at that it's 28. This is 28 actually so this is not technically the smallest I've ever gotten. This one's for Jo. This one's for cousin Jo. You think she'll like it? Yeah. This is basically my normal waist. This looks really good. This is good. It looks really good. I am so happy. I'm so happy. I'm so happy too. Also look at the look at the pattern in front like now that it's separated a little bit it's I loved it. It looked so good. There was something about having all internal bones with just that uninterrupted wall of boning on the front and side and the stuffed hip panels and everything. It was absolutely beautiful and I was so so excited to finish it and it was down to the last minute almost. I actually ended up doing a lot of the hand sewing for the bias tape on the inside in the car while we were driving down which was exciting and then we actually got there and we got to do a bit of a fitting or kind of an informal try on. My cousin still needed to finish the hem on the gown so I ended up standing on a stool for you know a good 20 minutes or so which considering me was probably very dangerous um but I was actually high enough of an ear that she didn't have to bend down super low to modify my hand and I was so excited about this gown. I mean look at it. It's got the little puffed sleeves. It's got the princess seam. It's got a nice high collar. It's not super fitted but it is very comfortable and it has the swirliest of skirts. I am quite happy with it. My cousin got to try on the corset as well and she loved it. It was beautiful. I think it looked amazing on her and she actually wore the corset while she was doing my hem so yeah it seemed to work pretty well and then we were going to film the reveal a few days later and we got to use this gorgeous room at my grandmother's house and it worked perfect. The aesthetic was gorgeous and we decided for simplicity's sake I would just go ahead and wear the corset as well as the gown so I could show off both and while we were there I was curious to see how laced up I could get in this corset since there was such a wide gap in the back but it was also like shockingly comfy. If you remember from the flora blast video I was very excited that I managed to get down to I think like 26 and a half or so um with the 1950s corset which was definitely the smallest I've ever gotten and judging by the fit and feel of that I did not think I would ever get any smaller than that um but we managed to lace me down to like 25 and a half and look at this face I was so excited because it was so comfortable. Now side tangent just for a second tight lacing is like a huge deal when people are talking about comfort but this corset was specifically designed so that all of the boning stopped at my waist so there was you know some tightness there but then my hips were completely free and they had a lot of cushion also I had tried it on multiple times I had designed it myself and it worked really well as either just kind of snugly fitted or laced way down for like an evening event so this corset does not have to be tight laced it but it can be if you would like it to be most of the time in the reveal it's not I'm a think I'm about a 27 here and it was perfectly comfortable like I could have just worn that for hours and hours. So I think that is all the things that I needed to say so let us roll the overly cinematic reveal!