Making an Early Victorian Corset + corset evolution over time

Hi I'm Dixie and at this point you have seen me make four corsets on this channel and I have enough corsets that I could easily cover most fashion eras going back about 300 years. Do I really need another corset? No. Do I have plenty of other costume projects I should be working on? Yes. But I saw that Black Snail Patterns had released several new romantic era patterns and I instantly wanted to make them and I realized that I already had in my possession most everything I needed to make a new corset, which is pretty rare. So there was nothing really stopping me from doing it. And how long could it really take me to whip up a new corset? This corset pattern is marketed as 1840s through 1860s style and the pattern is a copy from a design from a German magazine in 1854. But it looks almost identical to this corset dated to 1844 in Nora Watt's Corsets and Crinolines book. The basic corset shape didn't change that much from the late 1830s to the 1850s so I'm going to call this an early Victorian late 1840s style corset. So I bought the pattern and I printed it out. I wasn't entirely sure which size to cut so I measured the pieces in a few places just to be sure. For my mock-up I'm using the same cotton twill that I used for my most recent Regency corset. It's quite lightweight but pretty strong. And now for the part that a lot of you have been asking for more of, fitting. Well the first mock-up is looking decent. It does have a few fit issues. I think I need more hip flare on these two seams just because it's a little tubular and my hip starts to come out like pretty high so I know I need more space there. I may have a sway back issue, I'm not entirely sure, but I may need to adjust that. I also think I want to redraw the upper part of the back here and make it straighter because it's a little wonky and I have a lot of extra space in the side that needs to get taken out. Once I took off the mock-up I also decided I wanted to straighten out the gussets a little more and shorten them so I recut the slash lines. What's nice about this pattern is that it has multiple gusset options for different cup sizes and I used the smallest ones, of course. I took a tiny sliver out of the center back because of the wrinkling I was getting. You need a sway back adjustment if the bend of your lower spine is curvier than the pattern is drafted for. I'm also adding more high hip room at the side seams. You'll notice I'm not adding anything to the waist or the bottom hem of the corset. That part is fine, I just wanted more expansion space between my full hip and my waist. And I'm shaving off a tiny bit from the upper side portion of a few pieces to tighten up the underarm area. This may not look like a lot, it's less than an inch total on either side, but a little bit makes a big difference. Lastly I'm redrawing the underarm and back curve. The pattern includes two versions for this curve depending on whether or not you want straps. The designer notes that the original pattern had a low underarm which works better with straps even though straps weren't featured in the original pattern. And now seems like a great time for a little corset evolution diversion. In the early days of corsets, or more accurately stays, the garment was often stiffly boned which offered plenty of bust support. Those stays didn't necessarily need straps to help keep the bust in position, and the straps were there to enforce good posture. Working women who needed more range of motion wore strapless stays while upper class ladies would wear stays with straps. Nearing the end of the 18th century stays got shorter and shorter, ending at the natural waist or even higher. Long stays are balanced at the smallest part of your torso, which is usually your waist. You don't technically need straps to keep the stays hoisted up, but if the stays are much shorter you need straps, or like anyone who has ever worn a strapless bra knows, they'll just slide down until they reach that smallest part of your body. Again, probably your waist. The straps stuck around even when long style stays came back into fashion in the Regency period, probably because these newer stays weren't as stiffly boned as the stays of a generation ago and probably needed some extra help from the shoulders. At first these straps were adjustable, they were tie-on straps. Later the straps were stitched permanently onto the front and back, but by the late 1820s fashionable necklines had started falling more and more off the shoulder, and presumably women would just slide the straps off of their shoulders, but again anyone who's ever worn a bra knows that constant annoying feeling of slipping shoulder straps. But still the straps persisted into the 1840s and even the 1850s, but we also start seeing strapless models during this time as boned corsets replaced the older corded styles of stays. By the 1860s most corsets were strapless, but they still exist occasionally, like for athletic wear or corsets for young teens, kind of like a training bra. Anyway, I chose to forego the straps because I don't like them and they're pretty useless. Now it's time to cut out the final pieces, again from the same cotton twill, but this time I'm going to do something a little different. The most popular color for stays and corsets of this era besides white was drab, which is just the name for the beige unbleached raw fabric color. I already have a white coutil corset and I have a fancy silk corset, so I thought I'd do a kind of plain everyday corset, kind of like the t-shirt bra of the 19th century, by tea dyeing my pieces. And this is the final color. I only let the fabric sit in the water for about 10 minutes, and honestly this is a lot darker than I was expecting it to turn out. But the color is pretty even, so I'm happy about that. Well, I don't have any thread that matches this brown color, nor did I remember to dye any extra fabric so that I could make the binding for the top and bottom edges of the corset. So I guess that part is going to have to be white, and my stitching is going to be white as well. If you're wondering why I just didn't go out and buy some matching thread, it's because I did not want to. The nearest fabric store is about 20 minutes away, and I don't want to have to schlep a toddler around for a pool of thread. And if you're wondering why I didn't sew the corset first and then dye it, well, polyester thread doesn't take dye easily, so it would have still ended up white anyway. And if you're wondering why I didn't sew it with silk thread instead, well, stop asking questions. Once the boning channels are sewn, I added the bust gussets, and this corset is interesting because it is an over-bust corset, which is kind of uncommon. Most Victorian corsets, and even stays from earlier decades, ended at mid-bust, or the fullest part of the bust. The corset is supposed to lift the bust, not necessarily contain it. Your shift or chemise would provide any extra coverage. Later into the Edwardian period, corsets got cut lower and lower. The bustline also sinks lower to give that pigeon-breasted look. Eventually, the corset winds up fully under the bust, morphing into what we now call a girdle, and ladies who needed more bust support added bras to their undergarment collection. This pattern calls for lining the corset, but I decided to do a single-layer corset instead. But for that, I needed to cut facings for the center front and center back. This was a last-minute decision, so obviously I didn't think to dye these pieces either. I had bought several yards of this synthetic whalebone about three corsets ago, and I still have a ton left. Corsets of this time period were boned with baleen from whales, also known as whalebone. Although it comes from their mouths, so does that make it whale teeth? It was a strong yet flexible material, but obviously not vegan, and increased whale hunting over the centuries resulted in baleen shortages and high prices toward the end of the 19th century. Corset makers needed new options for boning and turned to things like featherbone or quills wrapped together into long strips, but they eventually settled on flat strips of steel, which are still sold today for use in corsets. Next comes the lacing holes in the center back. Metal grommets were invented in 1828 and improved and made more durable a couple decades later. Before metal, lacing eyelets were sewn by hand. I've also heard about carved bone eyelets being used, and Fig Leaf sells them online, but they are pretty expensive. About a dollar a piece, and I'd need like two dozen. Another change that comes with the invention of metal grommets is cross-lacing. Up until this point, corsets were laced in a spiral from the top down, and you'd have to lace yourself up about every time you got dressed, from the back. That's okay if you have a helper, but not if you're by yourself. Cross-lacing allows you to tighten the laces faster too. I'm now finishing up the gussets with some hand stitching around the points. By covering them with an embroidered satin stitch, it adds strength and resiliency to an area that is under a lot of stress, and covers the raw edge of the fabric from the slit. In the later Victorian period, corset makers added more and more embroidery called flossing around the ends of the bones to keep the bones from poking out through the fabric. I'm skipping the flossing on my bones just to save time. After this, I tried the corset on and decided I wanted to adjust the angle over the hips to be just a little bit higher. Corsets in the 1840s were still quite long over the hips, a relic of the Regency period when slim skirts were in vogue. By the 1860s, with the popularity of the big bell skirts, having a smooth line over the hips wasn't really important, so corsets got shorter and shorter. Now comes binding, or wrapping the raw top and bottom edges of the corset in bias cut fabric to finish the edge and keep the bones in place. Now you may have noticed that I am missing something on this corset. A busk, or the wider stabilizing bone that goes at the center front of the corset. Depending on the date of the corset, the busk is either a piece of wood about an inch or two wide, or it's a metal split busk with little hooks and knobs sticking out so that you can close the corset in front. This split busk was revolutionary, but I had a hard time finding a date for its invention and use. I've read online that a French dude invented it in like 1829, but then it was patented in 1848 by an American guy. I have searched the US patent website but I can't find anything that mentions it. We do know that they became very popular in the 1850s, but then again I've seen images from the 50s of corsets without split busks, but I've rarely seen any extant corsets or corset images from the 1860s without them. I've never seen an extant corset that is dated to pre-1850 that has a split busk, but I did find a couple fashion plates dated to 1837 with what looks to be corsets with split busks. See those little dots down the center front? This image was actually in the pattern instructions itself, and I managed to track down the original source. Both images are from the same year and even look to be the same exact style. Upon closer inspection, they're the same corset. Corset in satin patented by Monsieur Josselin. That Josselin guy is the one who originally invented the split busk, so it is a split busk in 1837. I don't know if one of these early busks would have been available outside of France or how much it would have cost in relation to a regular corset busk. I don't know if it would have been only used at first in fancy corsets or if it was also available in everyday plain drab corsets like mine, but not having a split busk sucks. It means you have to lace yourself in and out of the corset every single time you put it on. It's time-consuming to do by yourself. It's annoying. I really want an excuse to use a split busk, even if it would have not been readily available to me at the time. So I ordered one. Actually, I ordered two because when I measured my mock-up, the center front line seemed really long. I don't think I've ever used a busk longer than 12 inches before, and my measurements were telling me I needed one that was like 14 inches, so I thought that can't be right. So I ordered a 12 inch and a 13 inch just to be safe. I decided to go with the 13. The other one will be saved for a future project. Along with installing the busk, I added a waist stay, which is just twill tape stitched to the seam lines on the inside to stabilize the waist area. Because I used a slightly shorter busk, I needed to shorten the front bottom edges of the corset. And I shaved off a bit more fabric up across the hips as well, just to keep that curve. But with that, I needed to trim some of the boning. And since you've already seen me file bones and bind edges, I'll skip to the last part of this project. Adding a hook to the front of the corset. This allows you to tuck the excess lacing cord around to the front, but keep the lacing away from the waistline to reduce bulk. And this is probably the worst hook I've ever sewn, because trying to film something this tiny while keeping it both in frame and in focus, well that's probably harder than any other aspect of sewing this corset. I took a risk by only doing one mock-up and not testing out my adjustments before doing the final project, but I wanted to get this thing done quickly, and I think for the most part everything turned out pretty good. Even with fitting, this corset probably took me about eight or ten hours to make, you know, like during toddler naps and late at night. I'm glad I didn't go with a 14 inch busk, because that would have been way too long. This is about the maximum length I could do and sit down comfortably. It is bordering on a little too big, because I can lace the back gap pretty small. As long as there is some space in the back, that's okay, and I doubt I will be getting any smaller in the future. The bust shape is pretty good, but I think this top curve bit might have gotten stretched out a little while I was working on it with, you know, before I added the binding, because this edge is on a curve, so it's kind of on the bias. Next time I will stay stitch it. I'm going to take a longer break between videos this summer, because I'm going to be traveling a whole bunch, but I will be back next month with a new big dress project that I'll get to wear with this corset. So subscribe if you want to see that, and tell me in the comments which era of corsetry or stay making is your favorite style. Thanks for watching, and happy sewing!