This week seems to have flow away...
After the start of the Great Laundry Experiment, and my decision to get the special cleaning stuff after all, I turned back to sewing...
A couple of weeks back I put together my first Victorian style corset, and did the fitting. There were some minor alterations needed, and I was waiting for the boning and stuff to get here.
I ordered the supplies from Vena Cava. Spiral steel boning and caps, a book, and various other bits...
To go with this there was also the chemise and the bloomers... The bloomer pattern started out as a pattern for Open bloomers, but as the customer wasn't quite ready for that, I closed the crotch seam and went from there... Those got finished on Monday.
Tuesday I completed MOST of the chemise... There were one or two complications caused by my doing this with a single layer yoke (to cut down on bulk). When I do this pattern again, I'll make the yoke a double layer, self lined. Lots of stuff will be easier then... I have the felling on one seam to complete, and the hem. Need to fit it under the corset to decide the hem length, as this one is to be chopped off short...
On Tuesday I also finally got back to the corset: did the alterations and transferred them to the outer layer, and sewed that... Put some taped temporary boning channels on the inner layer, strongarmed himself into cutting the bones, slid them in, and then fitted it yesterday morning. Fitting went well: no further alterations needed. I took the bones out and numbered them yesterday. I also numbered the boning channels... I'll rip the tape off later, and the numbers will help me put the bones back in when I sew the two layers together. I measured the waist in the corset, so now I can start on altering the skirt and making the bodice to go over it. I also measured for the busk and sent for that. Once it gets here, I can finish off the corset...
I am taking pix of all this, and it's going up on LJ, in a couple of the groups I'm on there (a corset group and Dress Diaries), but for those not on LJ, I will be putting the whole saga on my web site later.
Meanwhite, here are a few pix I got up on Flickr...