#i never made a post about that one
Making a 1906 Corset (Part 5/5)
And finally, I am happy to say that I finished this project. There was very little left to do from where I left off in my previous post, I just needed to add the eyelets, the binding and the lace. Something that’s quickly done, right? .
While I did finish it all in one sitting, it was quite a hassle to add the eyelets, for some reason moreso than with my previous corsets. But first, I decided to do the binding.
Finishing the raw edges like this is super easy, you just whip stitch a band in place and you’ve got a nice clean edge. But I’m also pretty sure this was my last one layer corset. It is really hard to whip stitch when you only have one layer, I had to constantly go back and fix some stitches because you could see them on the other side.
Next up were the dreaded eyelets, and now let me start this by saying that not only did pretty much nothing work the way I wanted it to, the eyelets are also of really horrible horrible quality. And I didn’t have anything to make holes in the fabric so I had to improvise.
Last time I made a corset, I figured out that if I just hammer the holes in it’s easier than trying to get the fabric to stretch using a nail. So I tried to hammer some holes but it ended up being super uneven. Long story short, it was back to the nail, then pencil, using a bigger utensil every time to widen the hole. Hammering the eyelets in also only worked up until the plastic handle broke, so then my dad made some makeshift eyelet pliers and we went from there. I think I spent about two hours on the eyelets alone, if not more, but then I was finally able to move on to my favorite part of the day - the lace.
Adding lace to a corset is pretty much the easiest step in making a corset. Much easier than adding the lacing. If you have a thread that’s the same color as the lace, it’ll be barely visible and you can pretty much just sew it on however you feel like. I just did a really quick hand stitch and it did the job. Super refreshing after spending so much time on the eyelets!
So here is my final product - it’s not perfect, in fact once I tried it on one of the steel bones kept poking out and I’ll have to fix it, but it fits me perfectly and gives me an incredible silhouette!
I don’t have the right padding just yet, but here are some photos where you can see what I’m talking about -
Now let’s talk crazy myths about tiny waists.
This corset makes me look as if I had a really small waist, especially in the third picture. Even when I looked into the mirror I was incredibly fascinated, and I got my measuring tape just to see what was really going on and what was solely due to the sheer shape of the corset. And guess what? My waist was just about 2cm smaller than it is without a corset. That’s not even an inch. But that just proves that corsets weren’t meant to shrink you down to nothing, I was perfectly able to breathe in it, in fact I wore it for about two hours, I did my hair in it and obviously took all the pictures and didn’t feel like I had to take it off at all when I did. At first it was a little restrictive, as it always is, but once I wore it for a few minuted it actually got really comfortable. Sitting down I noticed it put a lot of pressure on my stomach, normally I wouldn’t have cared but since I have stress related stomach issues at the moment I found it to be a little uncomfortable. But other than that it felt like a tight hug and didn’t hurt at all. This is probably my second most comfortable corset after the Pretty Housemaid! But is that really a fair comparison?
Hope you enjoyed my sewing journey and hope to see you next time when I actually start working on the ✨mysterious dress✨
