> I've got another probably stupid question: How do you do the
> fitting??? I mean the corset is - at leat at the waist - much
> smaller than your real figure, so how can you actually try it
> on when not yet finished? It must be tight laced and there
> must be bones in it, else I cannot imagine a fitting. If
> there are no bones, there will always be wrinkles. And what
> about the stitching? It must be quite strong to not tear when
> laced up...
The mock-up is made out of heavy non-stretchy fabric -- cotton drill, canvas,
jean, and you have to use regular stitching, not basting length stitches. I use
a "sew on" set of eyelets (as Jen Thompson describes using for fitting her 1515
Italian dress - I'd give the web link, but the site appears to be down so I
can't be sure of the url). I first fit using that shell. Bones are actually not
required to get the initial fit - certain seams may require them, but mostly
they just smooth out wrinkle-spots. After the initial mostly unboned fitting, I
mark where I think the bones will go, and use twill-tape casings to put them
in. Then fit the mock-up again, smoothing out wrinkles and undesired bulges :-)
(which are usually dealt with by minute adjustments of the width of a seam.
Sometimes I skip the mock-up and just do all the alterations and bone-placement
stuff on the actual corset. This works best if the corset is unlined, which I
only do if I'm using coutil as the corset fabric. I only skip the mock up step
if I'm starting from a commercial pattern, and am therefore pretty assured that
the initial corset is close to my size or bigger.
Hope that makes sense!
-sunny
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