Sam in Japan

At least, that’s what I’m calling it for now, as it is a corset made from a vintage obi featuring golden bamboo. Kaguya-hime (Princess Kaguya) is a Japanese folktale from the 10th Century about a princess from the moon, who is found in a piece of golden bamboo by a woodcutter, who raises her.

Anywho, this has been my latest project. It was suggested that I try to work on something every day to help my brain, so I started working on corsetry again. My sewing room isn’t set up yet, but I was able to find all my supplies and get started. I also found a corset I had forgotten about, half finished, that I’m going to finish up too.

While it’s not quite finished yet, I thought I’d share some of the photos I took in the process of making a corset.

1. Sketch

Everything starts with a sketch in my world. This gives me an idea of what I want it to do, and how I want it to be shaped. It tells me where I want to move the body, so to speak, with this corset, and shows where the stresses will be, based on grain lines. This is literally a tiny sketch, so nothing is really straight or perfect. I muckered this up a bit by only sketching 4 pieces, while there should be 5 – I forgot the side piece! Ooops.

2. Pattern (not shown)

So I kind of forgot to take pictures of the process for patterning, but basically, I work off of a corset block I’ve had for ages, and just kind of… tweak it. I can’t explain exactly how I pattern corsets, because I just kind of do it. It’s weird, but I’ve been doing it for so long that I just know what works and what doesn’t. Does that make sense?

The biggest deal with patterning corsets is to make sure the lines across the top and bottom are smooth and natural, though.

If you’re just starting out, I can’t say enough good things about the Laughing Moon corset patterns! Go get those and learn from them, they’re awesome!

But I do have a bunch of pencils that look like Pocky, so that’s cool!

3. Fabrics

Is it weird that I pattern first, and then dig through my fabrics?

Either way, I found this beautiful obi that I think I had been given by Rachel in a giant bag worth of old kimono she had in her shed. It’s a soft gold color, with golden bamboo shoots. It has definitely been worn a lot, as there is quite a bit of wear to some parts. That’s okay by me, though, as I like the character it gives to a corset, to be able to see what it was before, and know it was used just as much in it’s past iteration as it is as a corset. I dunno, I like nostalgia.

The threads for the gold and silver are actual metal threads – thread wrapped with metal foil. Which is super cool IMO, as it really sparkles like nothing else.

Then, finding the accent silk and lining, I dug through my fabrics (and uttered the curse’d phrase “I have too many kimono and can’t find my silks!”) and made more of a mess of my sewing room, but I was successful. Bronze tissue dupioni silk and a beautiful blue cotton for the lining/inverse fabric (I make all my corsets without a busk reversible, so they have a “fancy” side and a “casual” side).

Cotton had been pre-washed ages ago when I was still in the US, yay! All set and ready to go, right! YAY! LET THE MAKING COMMENCE!

Or not.

My coutil was a mess.

Spend half hour ironing it while kitties are confused as to what is going on. Then maybe you can make something. Maybe.

4. Marking

Ah, more fun. Or not. Marking out the corset. I decided to be lazy while making the pattern, and not re-make it with the seam allowance added on. Because I just wanted to get to it. And of course, my want to just get to doing something with pretty things bit me in the ass, as it takes three times as long to mark out fabric and add the seam allowance then, as it does to do it once on the pattern.

Bugger.

Either way, I did it. Marked out the fabric, adding 15mm (look, I’m learning metric :\ mostly because I lost my US quilting rulers to the void of the sewing room) to the actual seams, and 5mm to the top and bottom (I like a tight binding, so I don’t like to lengthen the corset from my original plans too much, I just account for the little bit that will be trimmed off to smooth it out for binding purposes).

I will say, if you are making corsets, even if you’re not using coutil (it’s not completely necessary IMO, you just need something with a good weave that won’t stretch), the most important thing is your grain lines. I cannot emphasize this enough, paying close attention to your grains is what you need for corsetry, as it’s the whole foundation of body re-shaping.

Corset inners should only stretch along the bias. It needs a tight, supportive weave in the other directions, up and down especially. This is what keeps the fabric taught and holding it’s shape. The boning just helps to stiffen it in the necessary places, but the core of a corset is the inner fabric doing it’s thing and holding you in place.

5. Cut cut cut

I have this weird obsession with seeing how little waste I can get away with in my corsets. I dunno, it’s like a game I play with myself, plus, shipping coutil to Japan is expensive, so I don’t want to do that if I don’t have to. Same with the silks, I only have a yard or so of most of them, and I want to make them last. And kimono, of course, you can never find the same pattern twice, so that’s a given.

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6. Now you can start sewing

Finally, eh? I guess the parts about corsetry I really like are the picking out the fabrics, making the pattern, and the idea of sewing it together. Sometimes, I don’t even look forward to the sewing part (I’m looking at you, binding!)

But this is the first one I’ve done in a while, so I’m excited to get started on it.

Because I like the extra bit of support it gives, I quilted a bit on the lining, stitching the coutil front and back pieces to the lining fabric. It gives some more support, and looks pretty, too, when you’re wearing it with that side out.

The channel down the middle is where the busk boning will go.

Then, it was just sew it all together. Really, corsets aren’t that complicated once you’re used to making them. The first few are, but after a while, it’s almost like I am on autopilot. Sew a seam. Grade it. Press it. Move on.

Look! A corset! Along with the other one I had gotten to this point probably years ago.

8. Boning

This is a while thing on itself, but I’ll just leave a link to a thing I did a long time ago about tipping corset bones. Let’s just say, my hand really, really hurt, and we had to make an emergency 7:45pm run to Daiso to get me new pliers.

9. Binding

I don’t think I got a picture of this while I was doing it, but here is the fun of making tons and tons of bias (which is one of my least favorite things in the world to do) from the accent silk, stitching it in place, and then wrapping it along the edge to encase it. I hand sew the back side of my bias, so that the inside looks pretty if you want to wear it that way.

10. I should be done, but no, I decided to floss this corset

Since I’ve been doing embroidery a lot lately, I guess I got it into my head that I should start flossing more corsets.

Flossing is used to hold the bones of a corset in place, so they don’t twist at all when you’re wearing it. Now a days, it’s more of a decorative thing than anything, and quite pretty.

And I have this beautiful variegated gold tone thread that I just picked up. So, damnation, I decided to floss this thing!

Then I realized I’d have to be tricky about it, since I still want it to look nice when worn inside out. Which means, gotta hide the threads on the back side. Bugger. Something that should have been fast and fun is now time consuming and tricky.

Fortunately, it came out nice. Glad again for those embroidery classes!

So all I have left to do is plunk in the grommets and find a victim to try it on! I can’t do the grommets until it stops raining, however, which is a total bummer. Stupid rainy season.

Anywho, there is a brief overview of a corset being made. Kinda cool, right?

I’m going to be making more, I think. I feel terrible being such a drag on Chris by not having any income, so I’m hoping to get into corsetry and clothing and the like again, just for a little bit of help. Anything right now would be a plus.