Kickin' it Old-School in the Lower East Side

Check out this corset shop!  I found it on Yelp!  I will be visiting on my next trip to the city!  (because who could resist a whole bunch of secret bra and corset boxes with a ladder?  A ladder!!)  This is Orchard Corset Center.  Dreamy.

At Long Last: A Corset

Vintage Lace: Shattered

Soooooo, I lashed her to the dress form today for the first time, and the lace got caught in the cross-fire. Most of this lace has held up to gentle handling but this is in the back, and I must have wrestled too hard with her.  Now what??
I really, really love this lace.  (Except for the fragility.)  It must be just over 100 years old.

Cross Marking w/ Masking Tape

 I finally found a way to mark grommets that keeps them from going all wonky.  I was able to set 14 in about 1/2 hour today, start to finish.  The punch distressed the silk to some extent, which in turn, distressed me.  It's not too bad, just a noticeable pull in the fabric.  There must be a way to combat that.  Perhaps that's the role of the second grommet bone placement, which I didn't add to this corset.  Live and learn.  Also, note that I used a pressing rag for both marking and for fray checking to cover my work.  Never carry a Q-tip full of fray check across the work!

Just to remind self that on this particular Osborne Setter, the work goes in: Washer (concave-up), then, the work with grommets in it, face up.  One ends up working blind a bit, but going the other way smashes the grommet.  I hate having to test it 6x every time.  Wastes time and grommets.

Flossing I Dig

I made note of how it's supposed to be done.  It looks easy enough, but once the needle gets flying, it goes all over the place.  Best to count stitches.  When I count, I can tell which ones when I'm finished.
I love the flowers.  I had to leave the leaves off because there wasn't quite enough room.

Horribly Important

But I can't recall why.  I always snap pics during construction and think, "Oh, I'd like to remember that!" and then fail to notate why because I'm so busy sewing.

If I had to guess, I'd say I snapped this one to remind self to not cut the back this way again. I cut in two pieces instead of on the fold, and then had to remove stitches (the hot mess on the left side) to fix what that created.

Inter-Office Mail

My vintage leaves arrived today via inter-office mail:

Leaves, Maybe-ish

Snowing hard today.  Go to Postmaster anyway.  He’s kind of cute.  He says that the package was listed on a Pennsylvania manifest as sent out on the 14th.  And then it drops off the manifest.  No other information is available for the Vintage Black Leaves of Velvet.  

2nd order of velvet leaves is marked “Shipped.”  Maybe by Friday.  That gives me time to get the flossing complete and the beadwork lashed to the front.

Only two more bone casings to go.  As I completed the first side, a horrible bump on butt (Panel 5, lower edge) almost makes me quit.  But I promised self that I will not quit.  

It becomes apparent that the bump is being created not by the bone casing I just did, but by the bone casing I did previous to that, and can be fixed.  So, I remove part of the two previous bone casings, and re-position them.  Whew!  Saved that.

No Leaves At All

Obsessively, I hit "Tracking" in Etsy.  Strangely enough, there is a change.  A system glitch is my best guess.

Black Velvet Leaves Update: Status: In Transit.

Well, which is it?  Delivered or Traveling?  It can’t be both.  Either way, I don’t have them.  Vow to go to Postmaster in am.

No Leaves

Vintage velvet leaves ordered three weeks ago have not arrived and are marked “Sent 1/14/13.  Status: Delivered.  It looks as if I might not have any velvet leaves at all.

Have re-ordered less-expensive leaves, not vintage, but there really isn’t any time to get them unless the original order miraculously arrives.

Garter Supports, yes!

I got up this morning and decided that the triple garter supports from Lace Embrace Corset Calendar 2012 (July) were the way to go.  If you look at the picture closely, you can see the triple support tabs that blend down into a bow and a single garter.

I started out having a rough time turning such a small piece of silk, especially since the large end needs to be pushed through the small end first.

But eventually, after adding an embroidered star,  I ended up with this:

Which is lovely, except the machine slipped around the edge of the point, (computerized machines + tiny pieces + thickness of materials aren't always the best combination) which irked me, and now I only need 17 more of the silly things.  I think I'll try the next one on the treadle to see if I can make a cleaner run of it.
Three or four lousy stitches shouldn't bother me, but they shouldn't happen, either.  It's totally preventable.

Added: 2/4/2013
Note: Those Lost Garter Supports:
I made mention of garter supports in an older post and thought I'd mention that I eliminated garters at this point because with all of the beadwork, this is more of an external corset.  I had thought it might be sort of a burlesque corset, but it looks more like she'd be attending a 'fabulous soiree'.  There was enough going on here without them and the original pattern didn't seem to have any.

Salen, 1917

She's been sitting on the mannequin for a month, so it's time to do something about it.  I'd reached an impasse because I realized I wanted heavy boning but that to lay in the casings, I should have done that first, not as my next step.  Too late.  So here she rested while I thought about things.  I hauled her off the form today and snapped this:

I figure, if I'm about to totally wreck something, I may as well have a nice picture to reflect on where I'd been before things (might) turn sour.

Velvet Leaves

I ordered some beautiful black vintage velvet millinery leaves today.

Leaves

I fussed with all sorts of beads, crystals, threads and haberdashery today.  I'm thinking "Jack-in-the-Beanstalk".  A totally fairy-tale corset.  Maybe a cow.  (Just kidding.)  One thing is for sure, those green leaves just won't do.

Wedding Corset Complete

Silk and Coutil for a customer

The coutil is imported, and extremely stiff in its weave.  Even soaking it in water doesn't alter the texture very much, as I'd thought it was stiff due to sizing.  It is beautiful.  The silk dupioni is a lovely shade of lavender.

What I've Made This Month

A hat my husband hates:

A machine embroidered fleece scarf to match:
(He liked this better!)

A corset muslin:

Waugh 1901

I was very careful in cutting this one out.  I used the rotary cutter and took my time.  It was well worth it because as I pinned, the pieces folded together like a beautiful origami.  I still need to stitch it together and try it on, but it looks totally do-able.  The first pinned try-on (with the in muslin reverse, fill of pins, no busk, no boning, no grommet panel) it fit like a glove.  So, I'll have to see what happens when the mock-up is completed.  Looking at it more objectively here, I may increase the busk length by an inch.
I love this corset!
This muslin was pinned about a month ago, pre-Christmas rush.

Red Linen

Finally have time to start working on the draft I did a few months ago. Is red linen and I decided to have a hand at trapunto. My initial design for the quilting was too intricate for my basic machine set up (w/ out a free-motion foot; I've lost all feet and am left with a zipper foot, will replace feet as money allows). So, I made up the machine quilting on the fly. In the process, I re-used pillow innards as the batting. This was not the best move. In ripping out chunks of batting, getting them even was a challenge but I didn't really know that until I was done quilting. Subsequently, the left side is a little puckered, the right side is nice and smooth. The left side is also where I made the design change part way through so, it shows.
Other issues: the front placket was originally going to be a busk, but I don't have the correct busk length in stock right now, so I eliminated the other side's placket and just stitched the whole thing together. Which is fine, except that it isn't cut exactly on the center grain, and I can see that, and it's irritating me. Next time, I'll take my time instead of doing my cutting all willy-nilly.

Black Self Draft ~ Ivory Civil War Simplicity