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.
