titanic era corset and pattern

This is the corset I made and wrote about for Foundations Revealed this past June, enough time has passed that I can share some of the images here. Yea. I started with an old corset in terrible condition found on ebay, and after drafting a pattern from it this is what I came up with.

Here is a picture from the auction listing.

Not pretty. In addition to the general grubbyness seen here, the garter grips were rusty, bones were poking through casings, and the steels along the center back were bent. I probably would have been disappointed if I paid more than the $20 I bid. There was no information about the corset when I purchased it, so to help date it I made a timeline that illustrates the changing silhouette from 1900-1919.

The shape of the corset is almost exactly like the silhouette from 1911 on the timeline. Based on that, on the cut and construction of the original, and allowing for the fact that the corset's owner may or may not have been on the cutting edge of new trends, I'd say the antique corset I bought was produced between 1910-14. The original was made of plain cotton drill, but I spiffed mine up a bit by using cotton mattress ticking and the prettiest cotton lace ever. Because I like to show my work, here is a view of the interior of the corset.

I was so happy with the way this corset turned out. I'd been wanting to experiment with mattress ticking for awhile and it worked quite well. Here is the pattern if anyone is interested in constructing this corset.

This pattern will fit on an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper and is a high enough resolution that it should enlarge well without pixelling up. If you do sew a corset from this pattern I'd love to hear how the pattern worked for you. And to see other interpretations!

light as a feather, stiff as a board

It is light as a feather, but the ancient fabric seems more crisp and fragile rather than stiff.

I'm still dealing with hand issues (Why won't the swelling go down? Or rather, why does it go down, but reappear as soon as I use my hand?) so I thought I'd share this corset I have. So pretty. This is a circa 1890's corset. It appears to never have been worn. Made of a single layer of cotton, with whalebone boning except for the busk, underbusk, steels along the center back, and one at each side. So it is indeed very light. And this corset is tiny. The waist is only 20 inches laced closed. Tiny!

It has the original lacing too. Things like this are nothing but fun to study. A friend once called me a corset nerd, but I'm not the only one who finds these pieces fascinating. Right?