Morning all

Well just a quickie today, I’m very pleased with the way the corset is turning out, the velvet is being a darling and not wrinkling up at all during sewing, and I thought I would just share a tip I use for transferring marking onto corsets.  For the non-sewers, sewing patterns come with all sorts of information on them, printed on in more modern patterns and just a series of holes of different sizes and arrangements on the older patterns. These marks tell you how to sewing the pieces together and if you don’t pay attention to them things can go wrong.

Well, in the case of this corset I am
1. making it for myself, this always involves lots of shortcuts that wouldn’t happen in a garment I was making for anyone else and
2. has an inside that no one will ever see.

so here is how I transferred the tailors tacks;

on an ironing board or other pinnable surface sink a pin through the pattern and all the layers of material right down into the ironing board

Carefully lift the paper pattern and draw a dot in pencil exactly where the pin goes through the material.

 Do the same with the next layer. For bonus points mark both sides of the canvas, so it doesn’t matter which way up gets covered with it’s layer of outside material, but if you forget and realise after you are covering up the side you marked, stick the pin though the pencil dot, turn the material over and mark where the pin comes out, transferring the marking to the other side that way.  I hope that makes sense, please comment if you want extra clarity.

 You will have to excuse these photos as the displaced cat decided to make the canvas I had put out ready for cutting her bed one day and seems to be shedding a lot at the moment.

Obviously don’t mark the material that will be the outside of your corset as even if you mark the wrong side it may show through, I find that markings on the canvas are enough for me though.  The other way round this is to get a special pen that has ink that disappears after a couple of days. But there are 2 warnings with these; make sure you work quick enough to be done before the ink is and wash afterwards if your item is to be an heirloom, there is some sort of chemical in the ink that stays and can aid corrosion over a long time.

sewing from lining side

In the case of this corset, I went even further though and got my pencil and ruler and started drawing lines all over the lining, after all this is a fancy dress item and just for me, and I’m not telling if you don’t.  The boning channels get a little fancy on the front and I wanted to make sure I had them all even, so the easiest way was with a ruler. You see I had already veered off from the original by having fancy seam lines so all my channels are bigger than the original and a little rearrangement was needed. To be honest though just having taken that photo I can’t really see the lines anymore.

This was supposed to be a quick post, so I best be off now, and I’ll tell you about the boning next time. Just to say some of the channels are enclosed by the next channel, so with this corset you need to bone as you’re going along, but we will discuss different types of bones next time.

lots of internet love.
ally