June 2010

Underbust pattern tutorial

June 24, 2010

So here it is at last, the under bust pattern tutorial! At one moment in the making of this tutorial my portable hard drive crashed and all the data for this tutorial was lost with it, I was almost done with it all it was just a matter of putting the text and the pictures together, I had a pdf version of it, on Swedish which was in one way a good thing but it was not totally finished and had a few things that needed to be fixed in the Illustrator made diagrams that were lost.

It kind of killed me to loose all my data, so I kind of gave up on it all but yesterday I had some luck with the hard drive and managed to save the files needed for this tutorial. I was beyond thrilled!

So I present to you all the under bust corset pattern tutorial!

The biggest prejudices about corsets are that they are really uncomfortable to wear and that one cannot breath properly in them, this of course is all wrong. Sure there is a special feeling to wear a corset, you body is heald together in another way than most people are used to but there are no problem breathing, a corset that fits YOU well will ONLY reduce your measurements were it should, and that is the waistline. The problem with of the rack corsets are that they not necessarily fit you body type, you might have smaller hips then what the corset is made for and therefore you need to lace it more over the hips. This makes you lace your chest more tightly to be able to get the lacing as straight as it should be and that will make you feel like you cannot breathe properly. It says itself that to lace your chest tightly it is not healthy and can lead to problems. But as I said, a corset should only be reducing your waist measurement; a place where most of us have some squishy material anyway.

A lot of people fear pattern drafting, it seems hard, like there is a lot of math involved, but really it is not hard at all. All that is required is some logical thinking. There is no complicated math, no complicated techniques. It is all about drawing lines on a paper based on measurements taken from you own body.

What this text describes is how you, from measurements taken from your body makes a personal under bust corset pattern. What you will need is paper, pen, ruler and tape measure. This tutorial is based on how I make my patterns, after my personal pattern layout which is a corset in 12 pieces without side seam that will reduce more in the side and in the back. This gives a corset that is flat fronted and can if you want to have very dramatic curve in the without having any problems. Not having a side seam also means that you will not have any boning in the middle of the side. Continue reading “Underbust pattern tutorial”

18th century pocket

June 23, 2010

Hi and hello again, long time no see as usual ;) Now my summer holiday have started so I might be able to keep this place a bit more updated.
Lets start with the 18th century outfit I am making, all 18th century ladies need some pockets and so do I.

A pocket required embroidery, or at least I think so and it is a great way for me to try it out, I have not really done it for ages. As I am currently in love with Klaus Haapaniemi and his Satumetsä design that can be found on dinnerware from Iittala I decided to make his design on my pocket. I have found deer featured on historical pockets, and forest, flowers and birds are also common objects on pockets from the 18th century so the step to making the deer blue was not that big.
The pocket will be on a bleached linen fabric that I also have for my petticoats, chemise and bum roll and I will embroider in a linen thread. The thread is actually made for weaving, but there was no problem using it to embroider with.

To make my design I looked at Klaus Haapaniemis Satumetsä and took the elements and drew them myself but rearranging things to fit onto a pocket. It was a bit hard to see at the pictures from the internet but at my birthday I got two of the cups and that helped a lot, especially with the second bird, the one in the tree.

The it was just a matter of transferring to the fabric and start embroider it.

I started with the trees, so that I would have gotten better when I started with the important things; the animals.

Things went really smoothly and it was a lot more fun that I initially thought, In the beginning it seemed like A LOT of embroidering to do. But I spent most of my time in front of movies, at lectures or travelling by embroidering it is an excellent way of making use of ones hands in places where it might be hard to do other creative things.