Monday, January 23, 2012

Historical Cinderella - Underwear

Since Twila is so far ahead of me for our social dresses for CC30, today I played catch-up. I finished a pair of drawers, a chemise, and a corset. I used the drawers from #9769, the chemise from #5726, and the corset from #7215. Here's my results: Click for bigger, sorry they're blurry but I took them with a timer on my camera. Anyway, the drawers are wonderful. Since I'm going to be using lots of Venice lace on the dress I decorated the drawers with Venice lace instead of eyelet. I love how it looks. They fit really well, too. The chemise and corset not so much. The chemise I made up to my size and the neck is way too big. It's supposed to be off-shoulder, but not that much. I want to take it in,but the sleeves get in the way, so I'll have to take the neck off and re-gather the front and back. Probably too much work, especially since I realized that I can't trim the chemise with Venice lace because it'll show above the bare neckline. I think I'm going to draft my own chemise based on Elizabeth Stuart Clarke's directions and fit the guards first, only tiny sleeves, and then gather to fit. Maybe I'll even give it a V neck like the dress. The corset went together better than I thought it would; I didn't think I would be able to finish it in a day but I had no problem. I did check the fit, my hips are 6" bigger than the pattern so I just draped the hip gores and I took about 2" out of the bust before I finished so it fits well all over, but it's almost laced closed in the back and I don't think it'll work laced tight. I'll probably draft up Norah Waugh's 1860 corset for my next try. Tomorrow, though, I'm playing catchup with Bridges on the Body's Edwardian Corset Sew-Along. Arisia got in the way of me starting and I'm behind a mock-up.