I am taking time off of my corset until my 201 is out of the shop – no earlier than this Friday, if I’m lucky. I will also be ordering my dye for my lace.
Today’s entry is about hand-basting.
To recap, the finished corset is two pieces composed of five panels each. The pieces will be laced together (in the back) and fastened in the front with a busk. Once you have done two fittings and are happy with the fit you sew the panels together and clip seams (which I did in my last entry). On each corset piece you then sew the lining together (with the same alterations), turn right-side out, and hand-baste the lining to the shell at the seams. After you do this you will be stitching boning channels.
Below is my hand-basting, with boning channels marked in 1/4″ tape (not the greatest method, I’m discovering. Not sure what I’ll do differently next time though).
This was the first time I’d ever used a thimble. The thimble is put on a finger of the sewing hand to help drive the needle through the thick outer layer of the shell. Also, this is one case where hand-basting is needed. You can’t skip it, nor can you take a shortcut and do it by machine.
In other news:
My brother had these vintage crochet hooks in his possession. He didn’t know where he got them or why he had them – or even what they were. I don’t crochet but I do find crochet hooks handy. Perhaps someday I will see something worth learning how to crochet. For now, I have these hooks to pick up dropped stitches in my knitting.
From left: hoodie for Sophie, hoodie for Nels, ao dai for myself. Whee! All cotton, of course. Purchased from Denver Fabrics.
Glad to see the corset is still progressing – with the demise of SWN (Mary had other things she needed to do) I was thinking I wouldn’t keep up. Many of us have moved to http://talk.sew-whats-up.com/index.php and Mary will be dropping in from time to time as well.
Just think of how many garments were sewn entirely by hand – and so fast as well! Makes you break out in a sweat to think of it.