Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Work in Progress: Approximation of a 16th/17th Century Bodice

This is the bodice/corset as of Sunday at about 2:15 am.  Yes..... I stayed up all night.  I was on a roll!

This is the left front panel.... my left, not yours...  This is where I started making the channels for the spiral steel boning.


Here is detail from the left front panel.  
The first (top) stitches were from my sewing machine, and the only good ones that I got out of it before it gave me the finger.  Ok, so it didn't really give me the finger.... it doesn't have fingers, obviously...  It might as well have flipped me off, though.  All the stitches kept feathering, no matter how I tweaked the stitch length and/or tension.  My sewing machine just doesn't like this fabric.  The subsequent rows are all handstitching.  Not perfect, mind you, but it'll do the trick.

Detail from the neckline of the bodice.

And now the front right panel, all channels handstitched.

And last, but not least, the rough channel lines I sketched out on the front right side panel.

There are no expectations of this being historically accurate.  I've taken all of this from commercially made patterns and am altering as I go to suit my taste.

More photos to come as soon as all the channels are sewn in, boning added, and a rough fitting and recut of the pieces completed.

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