in case you missed it: the winner of the guessing game about my project is "heather"--who guessed correctly that i am making costumes for mozart's "the marriage of figaro" for the vanderbilt opera theatre! the stage director hired me to work free-lance on the show! but instead of designing from scratch i am making reproductions of real clothing from the period as represented in the paintings of thomas gainsborough and sir joshua reynolds.
heather, send me your address by email, and when the opera is completed i will send your prize--a patchwork bag made from the fabric used to make the costumes! i think you will like it--the fabrics are gorgeous.
and now to the rant:
i am convinced that if there had been sewing machines in the 18th century, there would not have been corsets.
for "the marriage of figaro" i made four, 18th century corsets. originally i had considered using butterick 4234 but after looking it over, i found enough errors that i decided to just make my own patterns.
corset making is not really that hard--they are mostly straight line sewing--but they are not quick, especially 18th century corsets. even making only half-boned models, even working assembly line to cut fabric and cut bones and sew channels and set grommets, each corset took about 10 hours.
not to mention that wrestling a partially-boned corset thru a sewing machine is akin to sewing a slipcover with the chair still inside.
and then you have to put binding on the edges, which is like saying, "and then you will step into hell".
first i tried binding them by machine, because i have bound probably hundreds of things big and small by machine and managed to do it quite easily. not these damn corsets. the top and side edges were not too bad--even the curves were manageable--but then there is the bottom with all those tabs and slits and i might as well have just sewn with my feet because it was about as coordinated a process.
so after first trying to sew the binding the way i always do--with the wider side on the bottom and going all in one pass--i tried sewing it in two passes--sewing down one side then flipping over and sewing the other--and even that was a PITA (Pain In The Asterick) and finally i just ended up doing it by hand, breaking four sharps and three betweens in the process and stabbing myself at least twice that many times and going blind by virtue of trying to do the impossible.
each corset takes about 6 yards of binding, so based on that it should have taken no more than 10 minutes each--instead it was AN EIGHT HOUR BLOOD-LETTING ORDEAL.
so gayle, when you see the corsets, that's why the bottom of each of them looks so different from the others. :D
that is a peek into the life of a period costumer, most days are a version of this, except with nicer fabrics.
i'll post pictures of said corsets when they become available. and now off to ingest a medicinal dose of dove chocolate.
