Corset remake / Steampunk!

Well, hello, folks! Remember my green corset of fail last fall? I had made a ~1870's corset drafted to my measurements using this guide, but failed to take into account the amount of squish moved from my waist (and lower) into my hips (despite reading several posts about this very problem from more experiened seamstresses, so it's my own fault, really), thus ending up with a corset that did the opposite of what it was supposed to do: it reduced at the hips and added at the waist, giving me a form more tubular than my natural body. 

Just a reminder. Also: Help, I've lost my
Corset Dropbox Folder?

I was ready to chalk it up as a complete failure and move on, but then the nice people over at the HSF Facebook page encouraged me to add in hip gussets. It took me some time to do it, since there was more things to fix then just the hip-width (plus the thought of taking off an reapplying the binding an the bottom swallowed up all of my motivation) but recently I got fed up with studying and took some time to fix what I could. First, I redid the front opening (still hook and eye tape, sorry) because it was a b*tch to close and easily getting in an out of the thing would be necessary to try it on for the changes. But after moving the eyes from between tell layers to on top of the binding, I must say I'm really happy with the closure.

Thusly encouraged, I went on to insert some hip gussets. I didn't want a bone right ontop of my hip and there was a side panel in any case, so instead of opening up a side seam I cut a slit in the middle of the panel from the bottom to my waist (this took several cuts as I was very careful not to cut too far and tried it on in between cuts to see if I had hit my waist yet. I think I could have gone still a bit higher, but I thought better safe than sorry).

Corset with the slit. You can already see the
difference it makes to the shape

Better look at the gap :)

Then I put a piece of scrap fabric on my hip were the slit would be, put on the corset on top and marked the outline of the gap on the fabric. I used this shape as a template for my gusset (after addin seam allowance, of course). I snipped a little y-shape into the top of the slit, folded all the edges inward, pinned the gusset in between the layers and back stitched into place (the execution of that last sentence took several hours, don't be fooled by its shortness!).

After again setting it aside for some time (still dreading the binding) I felt like sewing again I realized that I had just enough black ribbon left over to rebind the bottom edge, so that's what I did (in an easier and prettier way than before, so yay me). After that I figured I might as well go the whole way and crochet some lace for trimming, and after finding this very easy pattern, I went and did just that. I'm pretty sure the crochet was actually the least time consuming part of this entire remake... 

Anyway, now that it gives me more or less the shape I wanted it to and even looks pretty, I'm actually very happy with it! There's still some things I can't fix without taking the whole d*mn thing apart, but I think for a first try, that's tolerable.

I learned a couple of things while working in this (twice), so I feel ready for a "real" corset now. It's gonna have an actual busk, spiral bones, gussets and flossing, and I even have an original pattern if I can figure out how it works. I won't show any pictures until I can, though ;)

On a final note: out of curiosity, I measured the bottom width of the gussets, i. e. the width I would have needed to add to my hip measurements to make this corset work from the start. It's 15cm! I couldn't believe it! I'm starting to think that I miscalculated or measured wrong at some point, because there's just no way all that squish could have come from my waist... O.o 

Anyway, I'm very happy I stuck with it, I can't believe how good it turned out after my disappointment last fall!

Update:
 I've been sitting on the post above for a while now, waiting for an opportunity to get some better pictures of the reworked corset. Well guess what: I'm going to a steampunk party! I knew I'd have about a day to put something together, because I wrote another exam yesterday and will go snowboarding tomorrow, with the party tomorrow night. (Wait, this feels familiar...)
So I took out my finally wearable corset and paired it with several shirts, blouses and even my regency shift until I decided on my black Dirndl blouse (yes, I own a Dirndl. Please don't go around assuming every German owns one, the first time I actually wore a Dirndl was in Canada, but since I live in the south and literally on the border to Bavaria, I bought one last summer. Works great as a Little Red Riding Hood costume, too :) )
To add yet more steampunk flair, I decided to give this video a trial:

Hey, it's Threabanger again! Or at least Corinne from Threadbanger... :) 
I have 10m of black polyester taffeta in my stash, which I bought some time ago simply because it cost 14€ (the entire piece. So, like, 1,40€ per metre. Sometimes my impulse control is not the best :D)

I cut all the pieces, changing the measurements a little (when my fabric's width is 1,40m I'm not gonna be particular about 10cm more or less), making the panels a bit longer and narrower, but I don't think that changes the look very much. Also, I didn't have any lace to sew around the edges, so it's just pinked :)

Because I need a yardstick to cut in a
straight line when I can't rip fabric

Biggest Panel

The video really tells you all you need to know, so here's the only thing i did differently: To tie the outfit together, I wanted to have some of the green fabric of the corset repeated in the bustle. I decided to put a band of gathered trim on the smallest panel, So I ripped two strips of 6cm * 1,50m fabric and sewed them together. I didn't bother with finishing the edges because I liked the ragged, rough look for steampunk and sewed to gathering lines at 2cm in from the edge. (ran out of bobbin thread about 3/4 through on the second line. Didn't feel like taking it out and redoing it, so I restarted the line about a cm further and tied the top and bottom threads each in a knot. Yeah, that's how I roll.)
Pinned on, sewed (along the gathering lines) and again followed the video to make a waisband.

To top it off, I retrimmed a tiny hat my mother bought for carnival years ago, pretty sure it's from H&M. Of course, I forgot to take a "before" photo, but here's the ugly trim I took off:

Luckily for me, it was mostly sewn and hardly glued on, after I snipped all the threads I could just pull off the glued bits with no residues. Finished result:

And on me:

 That hat kept wanting to fall off my head. I need to fix this if I want to wear it for dancing tomorrow night...
Anyway, I'm off to bed now since I neither want to fall asleep snowboarding nor dancing in steampunk attire. See you all next time :)

Stardress

This dress has been in the making for almost a year now. Well, in my mind at least :)

Last June, I went to a big festival in Nuremberg, and one of the acts I saw there were The Killers. I love their music, and being there in the crowd with all my friends while these amazing songs were played would have been a memorable experience in itself, but for some reason, something else also lodged itself into my memory that night: the singers outfit. More specifically, his shirt, which was dark blue with lots of individually shaped and sized white stars on it (one of my friends later told me that her sister had that exact same shirt from the women's section of H&M. Make of that information what you will... :D).

Also, I have no idea why I associate the song "spaceman" with the idea of the dress, maybe he took off his vest for the song and I saw the shirt for the first time, or maybe I just heard the song for the first time that night and space and stars is an easy association to make. In any case, when I saw that shirt (an maybe heard that song) I wanted to make myself a dark blue dress with white stars on it. I was immediately determined to make a 50s, 60s style summer dress with a fitted bodice and a wide, pleated skirt. At first, I thought I'd make the dress entirely out of blue fabric and then appliqué some white stars on it to get all those different shapes and sizes, but quickly abandoned that idea in favour of printed cotton. As for the pattern, I had wanted to try the basic patterns in a pattern making book of my mother's for ages, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity for it. So, as I said, I had this idea back in June, but thinking it through took some time and then there were other projects, and exams and a hundred different things until it was February before I even started on the pattern.





















So I scaled up the pattern, made a mock up (which i didn't take any pictures of) and  gave a squee of delight when it pretty much fit right away. Only problem, it didn't go all the way to my waist, but I figured I'd just lengthen it before cutting out.

Construction was pretty basic - fold, iron and sew the darts, sew the side seams, pin yourself into the bodice every once in a while to figure out if it still fits (which was kinda tricky once I sewed the side seams, I had to ask my brother to help me, he seemed kind of surprised when my request for help wasn't immediately followed up by a description of computer problems).
When I was done with the bodice, I had about 150cm*140cm square of fabric left, plus some scraps, so I decided to go all the way and make the skirt 3m long. In hindsight, thath might have been a bit long... so next time, maybe only 2m, so that there's less swearing in the pleating process ;)
And my dress has pockets! YES! One thing that always annoys me about full skirts is that they rarely have pockets, which is just thoughtless nowadays where nobody takes five steps without their cellphones. Also, I don't like carrying around tiny purses all the time, so I figured out how to make pockets and hide them in the side pleats:





















I cut four pocket-sized rectangles from the leftover scraps and sewed them onto the edges that would be the side seams of my skirt. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the seam only goes about halfway down the pocket so that the bottom would be lower than the edge of the opening, if that description makes any sense. I also late clipped the part below the seam to reduce the bulk where the panels would be sewn together.
Then I pinned the skirt to the bodice, making sure that the sideseams of bodice and skirt met, and that's when I got the suspicion that I might have overdone it with the skirtwidth. I mean, three metres is what I usually use for historic skirts...
But double box pleats did the trick :)

After that I only had to finish the neck and arm opening, which I did with bias tape made from scraps left over from the quilt. It was quite a small scrap. But I made it work :)

I fixed the tape to the wrong side with a little hand sewing because I didn't want any topstitching to show. I'm absolutely happy with the dress and don't really want to take it off now... Well, summer's bound to come sooner or later :D