Corset part 1, & Has It Really Been Ten Days?

Despicable! Absolutely terrible. To make up for the utter irresponsibility of this, I shall make post With Pictures! Because those are the best.

Over spring break I decided that it's been too long since I've sewn anything. The reason for this is that I'm really quite a mediocre seamstress, and I chronically cut corners while sewing. Because of this, I'm always dissatisfied with the end result. Anyway. I forgot all that a week ago, and decided to make a Regency-era corset. I would never wear such a thing in normal life, so at least I don't have to feel too bad about it if things go terribly wrong. I used the Mantua Maker pattern 1810-3, and began cutting and sewing immediately with fabrics I happened to have lying around. All I've got to say is it's a good thing there's more than one seamstress in this family, because I soon found that my old '60s Singer machine was completely out of order. Instead I used Angela's Necchi, which works just fine but sounds like a jackhammer. Here's the first layer, which will be the interlining:

The lighting's not all that fantastic, so if you can't tell, it's reddish-maroon cotton that I got from Elise for my birthday around a year and half ago, I think. It's quite thin, but I had a thicker canvas-type fabric for the lining, which will be taking most of the brunt of the corsety strain:

The next and last layer, which will be the outside of the corset and (hopefully) the most aesthetically pleasing, I cut from a slightly stretchy length of striped fabric that I found at the very bottom of my trunk. Don't ask me what sort of fabric it is, because I don't know. I'm fairly sure that Mom bought it a few years ago with curtains for the Jamshack in mind. I had the vague idea that I would be able to make all the stripes line up on the corset so they would look good and I would feel fulfilled as a seamstress to have made them all even, but of course it didn't work out that way at all. Mostly because the side and back pieces had to be cut diagonally to the grain. I had a tearful hour or so where I tried to make it work, and recut a few pieces, but in the end it was really a lost cause all along. I thought about finding some other cover fabric, but I like the way this fabric looks, and when it came right down to it I didn't really want to deal with it any more. The end result of that layer:

The stripes are faint enough anyway, right? Right?

So, feeling wonderful at all my accomplishments, I pinned all the pieces together so I could baste them and get all the bias tape to cover up the loose ends. Of course it didn't end up working like that. Somehow in all my frenzied sewing, I must have been using different seam allowances or something. Probably because Angela's machine doesn't have a line for 5/8 inch and Mom's does. Anyway, the interlining turned out way too small when I pinned them all together.

For some reason I couldn't get this picture to rotate and stay rotated, so sorry. As you can see, the interlining's way too small, and it's by nearly an inch all round. How did this happen?! I'll have to redo that whole layer. All those hand-sewn gussets, all my toiling, gone to waste... *sob*

Anyway! Pictures will be posted when I'm finished, or nearly, or whenever I decide the Next Stage needs photographing. Until then, let me entertain you with a picture of a snowman I made today in the several inches of snow that fell last night.

His name is Hank.

-Amy