sewing slowdown ... a bit broken

I'm way behind on my austerity corse and I'm going to cut out the mock up this Sunday.  Sadly I've had some health issues that have impacted my my awake time.  That is I've been getting plenty of extra sleep at the time of day when I'm usually sewing. 

So I'm remember the turtle can win the race, and I'm defining win as finishing the corset and my regency clothing plans.

fun with scissors and sticky tape

Tonight I went to the library after work.  They've got a great long bench that I've used for cutting out fabric in the past. 

I sat down with my paper scissors and sticky tape and put together the A4 sheets of paper that the pattern was printed on.  Then I measured the waistline.  11 & 5/8" per each half.  then I worked out how much difference I'd need, and typing this I realised that I forgot to allow a gap in the back of the finished corset. {foreheaddesk}.  So I'm going to have to remove 1" from these 5 pattern pieces.

I didn't divide the total difference by 5, as there are 3 pieces in the front half, and only 2 in the back.  So I split the increase into 2 - equal amounts into the front and the back.  So the front pieces were increased by 1/3 of the quarter body difference, and the back 2 pieces increased by 1/2 of the quarter body difference.  I hope that makes sense to you!

This is what they looked like when I'd done.  I'm also going to extend the upper edge by 4 or 5cm, so that the Huge Tracts of Land are supported by this corset.

tick: enlarge pattern to original size of garment

Today I stayed a bit late at work and scanned & enlarged the pattern using Paint.

What I do is scan and save it as a jpeg.  Then I open the file using Paint.  Print it out once to work out the proportion I need to enlarge it and change that in Print Setup, as well as reduce the margins to as small as possible. Today I had to fine tune cos it was slightly too small - it came to 197.49%, and I went with 197 when 198 worked just fine.

I measure the scale over several inches (at least 3) just to make sure it's as close to accurately scaled as possible.

Came home & stared sewing the 1st regency chemise. Got about 1/3rd of the way and felt my energy plummet. So I stopped sewing before I made a silly mistake.

Tomorrow night I'll take the pattern pieces together & measure the waist & hip to see what they are.

the probable fabric for my Austerity corset

I located the cotton I bought 4m of around 2 years ago.  It's a tightly woven cotton, with the stripes about 1.5cm or 5/8th inch wide.  There's plenty and I thought it would be useful for 20th century underpinnings. 

I also have pale putty green canvas that I got for an edwardian corset - might use it for the denim 1890-1910 corset in Salen's book.  I've scaled that pattern up already, but don't think it's suitable for this sew along.

not so Utility corset

I'm sewing along with the 1911 corset sew along as it's possibly the only titanic related event I'll get to this year ... however tenuously linked.  There's an 10 course dinner in the Blue Mountains, however it's the same weekend as JAFA so I'll be in Canberra. I'd love to do both but without teleportation it can't happen.

I'm going to be a little non-conformist and sew the 1918 Utility 1917 Austerity corset from Jill Salen's Corsets.  I've long wanted to sew my way through all the pretties and the less pretty, so I'm seizing the opportunity.

I'll not need to use hessian like textile, phew I can afford better than that. I'll do the patterning next week as my local library has printer issues since xmas. :(

I'm cutting out  the 1790 Jumps tomorrow :D   I'm using a single layer coutil with steel bones and metal eyelets.  mwa ha ha ha.  I'm such a lazy re-enactor.   My group's costume authority will allow it cos it's internal and not external clothing.

1911 corset sew along

I'm leaping into this one, and not because I have a titanic era event to go to in 2012.  It's because i've been intending to make one for over a year.  This is motivation to actually do, instead of think about doing.

I'm sorta kinda hoping to be the winner of the blue coutil giveaway, but otherwise I'm going to use some pinky beige fabric I bought *cough* years ago as it reminded me of early 20th C underpinnings.  I got 4 metres of it and as I'm re-organising the giant stash-o-fabric over the Xmas/NY holidays I'll come across it easily. Pics will follow