A New Civil War Era Corset: In Which I Ramble About Hip Springs

As I said in an earlier post, my first civil war era corset simply wasn't cutting it any more. It was the first corset I had ever made, and was far from aesthetically pleasing, and uncomfortable to boot. So I decided to do a little research into corsets of this era and make a new one. I tried to make this corset from The Lady's Home Magazine, but something went wrong when I was trying to scale the pattern pieces up and enlarge the corset to my measurements. I made a muslin of one half, but the results weren't what I was hoping for, and I didn't want to fiddle with the darn thing any more. So I dug through all my sewing drawers and bags until I found the Simplicity pattern I had used to make the corset the first time. I had cut out the pieces from muslin (but I forgot I had… obviously didn't use them to make a muslin the first time), so I used those to fit the corset to my body much more accurately. I used the same canvas left over from making my Edwardian Corset, as well as some of the leftover spring steel boning. The spiral steel boning, as well as the busk, I cannibalized from the original. I had a little bit of bone casing left over, but not enough to complete the whole corset, so I improvised by using some bias strips I had on hand.

The inside of the corset. The pink striped casings are the ones I improvised from bias strips.

However, and this is the moral of the story, no matter how well the corset fits the waist and bust, it will still be insanely uncomfortable if there's not enough room for my hips! After wearing my edwardian corset with wonderful gussets, I don't think I can ever go back to a corset without them. I found this out as soon as I had this civil war corset complete enough to try on. The pattern is fairly nice (Simplicity 5726, I believe), but does NOT have enough spring for my hips, apparently. I should have taken a picture before I decided to add gussets to the hips so I could actually wear the darn thing. It was bad…
So, without further ado, here is the finished corset, with enough hip spring to be comfortable.

I could probably have added bust gussets too, but I decided against it. Do you see the difference hip gussets make?! Before I added them, the sides simply kept going down from the waist in a more concave fashion instead of curving around my hips, squishing me in the most uncomfortable way.