Corsetry

Here is my first foray into full-blown steel corsetry. "What?" I hear you say. "You did RenFaires and SCA for umpty-zillion years, how can you say you never did corsetry before?" Well, it's true I did do RenFaires and whatnot as a starving college student, and put together some fairly nice fitted fabric bodices on a shoestring budget, usually out of whatever upholstery fabric I could find in the bargain bin. But by the time I was a little older and had become solvent enough to do serious period costuming, my persona had regressed from vaguely-middle-class-Tudor to the wife of an 8th c. continental Saxon mercenary -- tunics, not corsets, in other words.

So now, here I am trying my hand at 1855-era costuming for the first time, making a ball dress for Ali for the Sesquicentennial Ball coming up in November. I plan to make a gown for myself too, as well as a costume for Mike. (Hunter is not the slightest bit interested & will be sequestered with a babysitter on the night of the ball.) Ali's gown is the test case, since she is a standard right-out-of-the-pattern-envelope size. I am sure I will have to do some fairly extensive modifications for my dress & didn't want that to be my first stab at it.

When you make costumes that have some fairly serious underpinnings, like corsets, you have to make the underpinnings first since the gown will fit differently without it. Otherwise, if you fit the gown without the corset, and then put on the corset, the waist will hang all funny. (Mike tells me it's the same dilemma with armor -- more than one newbie fighter has made his armor first, then his gambeson; then wondered why it doesn't fit when he puts it all on.) So, anyway, I am making the costume from the skin out, so to speak.

Here is the chemise & corset. (Yes, I know this is a picture of my daughter in her underwear, but it's 1855 underwear, so I don't think it's that risque, do you?) There are 20 steel stays in this thing, plus the busk, so it's quite rigid. I made a couple mistakes I won't repeat on the second corset, but overall, I think it turned out pretty good for a first attempt.

Next is the petticoat, then the dress itself. Ali (of course) wants a giant hoopskirt, but my usual haphazard research tells me that 1855 is just a hair before the time of full-blown hoops; skirts were full, but worn with very voluminous petticoats to give them the fullness, not hoops. Not that I doubt we will see a hoop or two at the ball in November. Heck, I won't be surprised if we see recycled Scarlett-O'Hara green-curtain costumes. You know somebody's got one of those floating around somewhere ;-)