Making Corset Underlay

Traditionally the Georgian women would have worn corsets underneath their dresses.

However to save time and budget on this particular project we are making out corset but it is sandwiched in together with the fabric itself.

Usually this would be used in theatre to create quick change costumes, or to prevent actors for forgetting to put their corseted underwear before going on stage.

It all begins with the patterns, the boning channel positions marked on to the pattern for marking later.

The underlay corset is made out of calico, so the calico is ironed, the folded over twice. So for each left and right ride there will be two pieces to make  sandwich for the boning.

At the bottom of the pieces a 8 cm skirt was drawn, rather than the normal 2.5 centimeter seam allowance, this is because at the time the dress was going to be made as one whole piece, where as now it is made as lots of panels that will be attached to each other.

At the centre front of the bodice a 6 cm seam allowance was also drawn on, this will help when trying to attach the two centre front together with hook and eyes or another fastening.

 To prevent from wasting more calico my partner and I decided it would be a good idea to reuse and recycle the long circles that were originally on our first calico test.

With all of the pieces cut out, it was on to the next step of the process.

The next task, having cut out all of the fabric pieces was to mark out the seam allowance and all of the boning chanel lines on the fabric.

Above you can see me partner demonstrating how to complete this task.

We used carbon paper, and a tracing wheel to trace the seam allowance line, boning chanels and balance marks on all of our pattern pieces.

The next step was to sew the boning channels down, leaving the bottom open to allow for us to put the boning in to the boning channels, these will be sewn shut at a later stage.

To help get an accurate size for the boning channel lines, i measure the lines again a piece of rigilene which we would be using.

The next step was to prepare our rigiline, which we had to hold in half and sew down to keep it in this shape. In one long strip we sewed 10 metres worth of rigiline, all done on the industrial sewing machine, as the domestics at university make a lot of noise if you try to sew rigiline on them.

The rigiline was cut down to the correct lengths, then to prevent it from poking into the actor and hurting them, to smooth off the cut ends of rigiline we had to burn and melt the plastic. 

Finally our rigiline was ready to put in to the channels.

Here you can see how the ends have been burnt to melt the plastic slightly

The rigiline boning give the corset underlay structure and stiffness , needed to give the desired shape in the dress, a slim waist, leading into a wide waist.