Secret that's not so secret.  All my corsets so far are made from off the racks that either don't fit or have been worn to death.

For Christmas I received the Sew Curvy Sophia kit, but I'm a bit scared to use it.  What if I mess all that beautiful fabric up!

I have some canvas that I'm going to make a toile with, but still a bit scared.

Okay, short rant over how sore my fingers are.  The amount of times I stabbed myself with pins was ridiculous.  I was honestly scared i would get blood on the white fabric and it would be ruined.

Also, what is with the satin ribbon, you line it up perfectly and then lift your hands to get some tape and it leaps away and you have to very carefully line it up again.  I swear it was trying to drive me crazy.

And sewing curves together! I pinned to the point I had almost continuous pins and still the stitching wouldn't quite line up.  One time I had even sewn in a pleat that I then had to unpick all the time praying the satin wouldn't unravel.

I really want to save up and go to the Vanyanis corset making for beginners in the hopes that in person someone can show me where I'm going wrong.  Also her corsets are awesome. :)

Okay so I feel a bit better ranting about that even if no one see's it.

Corset making is hard, but really fun.  I feel conflicted but don't want to stop.

Does that make me crazy?

It's probably the ribbons fault.

So I learnt to fear the satin ribbon, as it was only just enough for this project and somehow i had bought different sizes in the black and the white.

I ran out when it came time to cover the panels and ended up getting some cotton jacquard as I couldn't imagine trying to deal with more satin.  I really like the fabric though and want to try doing more with it.



I also bit off more than I could chew when it came to applying lace and beads.  Originally I was going to run a line of pretty lace over some of the ribbon panels but by that point I was worried it would fray.

I ended up cutting out pieces and stitching them on but didn't cover as much as I wanted before the deadline.



I also tried to pattern match the front.

I tried to use the corset I had partway completed as a kind of toile so I put the bones and busk in and some grommets so I could lace up.

The under bust was tighter than I wanted and the hips closed all the way. The waist didn't feel like it was down,as far as I would lime. Also I had flesh spilling out the top and bottom of the corset.

I redid the pattern and was a inspired by Mitchell Danes pattern in that he appeared to have shaped the front and back of the pattern. I may have gone a bit overboard.

(Unfortunately I ran out of grommets, so will be fixing that soon. Could do with an extra on on the bottom of each side.)

I raised the back and chose a longer busk for the front, shaped the front panel to come in at the bottom. I shaped the back panel as I wanted some more shape and had this idea about creating an hourglass on the back.

I did struggle to match up the curves and sew them evenly and neatly without wrinkles.

I've had some ideas since about ribbon corsets with more panels and also whether an over bust could be done successfully.

I also want to try making one out of elastic with a zip to wear as support for work.

So many ideas.

The idea to enter the Foundations Revealed competition was very last minute. I didn't even know about it until a month before and at the time I wasn't planning on entering.

I had just started trying to wear a corset belt that I made using the http://www.corsettraining.net/ pattern with adjustments to my measurements because I'm to big for the standard and finding that because my stomach is so squidgy it keeps trying to fold in under my ribs. Not the best design for my body and my first go at sizing up a pattern. Works really well for sleeping though.

I saw the ribbon corset sew along and decided to participate. I got some green ribbon on special and worked out a pattern. As I was putting it together I ran into some challenges. The ribbon ran away as I tried to pin it. I still don't know how to make the edges neat. I used some machine embroidery on the ribbon and it caused the fabric to wrinkle.

Somehow all this caused me to decide that I wanted to enter a ribbon corset into the foundations revealed competition.

This blog is to document my experiments in corset making.