Renaissance Court Gown - Chemise and Bodice

Last summer I bought brocade fabric and I spent half a year in procrastination over half-finished corset. Here's the story.

I chose the extant bodice of Dorothea Sabina von Neuburg.

 I drew the basic pattern and spent some time trying it with a scrap fabric. Here's the bonus that I didn't expect - I found out why the breasts are excluded from boning. I used to think that it is for the breasts to show at least their natural shape, but the opposite is the truth. The poor breasts get a bit squeezed at this pattern of corset and you can see that the the fabric is supported by them. It is easy then to take the chalk and trace the line where the boning is not needed. So no natural shaping, they just wanted to save the boning! :-D

(And it looks nice as a piece of underwear of course)

Two layers of twill for the right side, one for the lining. At this point I hid the seam inside, but later on I decided to leave the side seam allowances out. If I took on weight by chance :)

I sewed a line where the edge should be and cut it out with a few extra milimeters.

I sewed the tunnels, put in steel boning and sewed on bias tape. The ends of stell boning are ground as usually (this took me ages!)

There is a great tunnel at the center for a simple wooden busk.

During fitting the inside of the corset got a bit dirty from sweat and I started to imagin how it would look after one summer of performing. Disgusting. So I also made a chemise. I traced the neckline along the bodice neckline, just a tad smaller. The shoulders are 5cm wide. The pattern is simple A-shape and sleeves are like squares. The front neckline is by chance 10cm wider than the back one, so I made the whole front panel wider.

I don't have the wrists yet. I added lace to the neckline.

The chemise. The neckline is far too wide without the corset :-)

Hooray, half a year and the corset is almost done. I just need to add the little spaniel-ears to the lower back. And you know what? I can tie the bodice myself! The trick is that you start with the lacing wide open but thread. Start pulling the ribbon and make your back wide so that the edges don't touch. Keep on until the edges are closed at the top, then just pull and voila.

Then you spend next ten minutes trying to persuade the chemise neckline to go along the corset neckline :-)

Blue-brown Renaissance Costume - Corset

So I made the pattern, now let's make the real thing.

I drew the pattern at the upper of two layers of fabric and marked each outline to its symmetrical piece - each line was drawn really thick, I put them wrong sides in and thuded with a fist. Method for the lazy :)

I remembered that once I was making a prototype from lightweight fabric and then the real sturdy corset with three layers was too narrow, so I sewed 2 mm from the drawn line.

I also had to put a bit more to the front center. I found out that the seam allowances must go to the center. The bones would lay one on another at the lowest point of the front panel if I didn't widen the pattern. A tunnel for each bone.

I sewed and serged the seams where I was sure I won't be adding in case the corset is narrow. I fitted it and found out it was just okay. So in the end I added 2 mm to each seam plus half a cm to the center front.

I sewed the boning tunnels on to the corset body. I ironed fusible web where the grommets would be and sewed a tunnel there too. I serged the lower edge and closed the tunnels with few more stitches where the boning would end.

The steel boning must not be sharp cause it could cut the stitches. My grinding machine did the job (oh, I love it!).

Maybe once I'll want the buy these special endings for boning, but at the moment, I don't see the point.

I cut the upper edge. I inserted the boning until I reached the stitches and drew a line at the upper edge. Then I took out each bone and made a line 8 mm lower than the first one. There I will cut and grind again

I punched the holes for lacing. They are just behind the boning, so that the fabric would not tend to wrinkle. I inserted grommets.

The upper and lower edge is neatly finished with a bias tape.

Blue-brown Renaissance Costume - Corset Pattern

Yeah, I made a new corset pattern and I am proud of it :-) I made out my own way and it quite worked.

So to the measuring: measure the waist, hips (at the lowest point of the corset), bust (really tightly - for me it was normal bust measurement - 3cm) and the measurement just above the bust (also tightly), where the corset would end.

Then add some more: measure (from waist) where the lowest point of the corset would be - both at the side and at the center. Waist to armpit. How much the front piece would be higher than the rest.

Some of these measurements are just about design, so e.g. for my corset I used 5 cm higher front piece, the lower edge is lower than waist: 10 cm at the sides and 15 cm at the center.

 And you can measure where the side seam would be, so the width of the back.

Start with this construction, using the measurements for back, armpit, lowest edge, hips and front piece hightening.

This will be half the corset with back middle at the left and front middle at the right, so don't forget to divide every width measurement by two!

Here's how to draw the pattern in eight easy steps :)

Measure the front piece from the right edge - the back and front pieces toghether must give you the bust measurement.

As the corset will form the figure, I substracted 1.5 cm from each side edge and drew vertical lines there.

In the middle between them I splitted the lower edge and drew nice hip lines from the waist to this point. You really should imagine women's hips there to get the shape right.

Measure the side lowest point and drew the lower edge. Decide where the 'tucks' will be.

(In fact the left tuck on the front pieces was straight like the other one, but this should work as well. It is always easier to fit and sew straight tucks.)

When you distract the waist measurement from the bust measurement, you get a width that you will divide to the tucks. I used slightly more of this for the front piece, and the least for the tucks closer to the center.

Draw about a middle between the bust and waist line at the front piece. Add the same widths for the tuck as at the waist line.

Join the tucks with lower and upper edge.

Prolong the auxiliary front center tuck line above the bust line. For the other front piece tuck, make a parallel line.

Substract the above bust measurement from the bust measurement and you'll got the width of the tucks at the upper edge. At the three front pieces, I only changed left and right piece. Draw the edge.

 Join all the tucks.

Draw the final shape. At each sharp corner, draw a nice spline.

And here's the reality after the whole afternoon of fitting :-)

(If you ever used my pattern, please leave a photo of the corset in the comments :-*)