Yeah yeah yeah, so *everybody* is making an effigy corset these days. I actually made this months ago, and the mockup a few weeks before that, but I've only just gotten around to an entire faire season's worth of picts, costume updates, and what have you. Update: I've added pictures of my newest effigy, which is stiffened entirely with hemp cording. I think it worked out rather well.
If you're looking for information on how the effigy corset is *supposed* to be made, I'd advise reading drea's article or sarah's article. They've both got excellent articles and pictures and information an all that jazz. If I'm not internationally notorious for failing to do things "the right way" by now, I should be. I took the liberty of altering the pattern when I made min to make the corset easier to make via machine. If you're not familiar with the actual article, the effigy corset has a pair of side back seams (which may offer some shaping, but I believe are mostly there to prevent any part of the corset from being cut on a true bias). This seam means that boning channels exist with, well, a seam through them. Getting boning past a seam allowance is not this little sempstress's idea of a good time. What I have done is to extend the line from the center dip of the corset all the way to the back of armscye and separate the pieces/make the seam along that line. That's where a piece of boning falls anyway, so it was convenient. The two front pieces together look rather like a shield. The rather alternative piecing style makes it possible for the corset pieces to be sewn together into layers, then joined to form the corset and then have the boning channels put in. The original piecing of the effigy requires the pieces to be made up and boned separately, then joined together by hand into a corset. I'm not convinced I trust my hand stitching to hold pieces of a corset together. Images of (literally) bursting at the seams run through my head and make me shudder. Maybe it's just me.... Anyway, in this case, the interlining and lining are made from medium weight cotton, made up, joined, channeled, and boned, then the facing of teal silk is made up, and joined wrong-side to wrong-side to the boned piece (yeas, that the opposite of how you normally do things, and yes, it's a real pain the the patoot to convince that to go smoothly through a sewing machine). The reason that I joined it WS to WS is because I didn't want to try and turn the silk tabs against the boned tabs, because I was afraid that either a) it just wouldn't run, or b) the silk would fray and the corners would pop in the process. The raw edges are trimmed, then the whole thing got bound with soft leather (chamois, which has the tremendous advantage of being a cheap leather that actually likes moisture - sarah beat me to posting this little tip ;) If you noticed that it's a little uneven when closed, you're on to something. Being a bear of very little brain, I forgot that I planned to spiral lace, or maybe I just wasn't thinking about the full implications of spiral lacing, but one way or another I made all the grommets line up when they should have been offset. I spiral lace it anyway because it's the most expedient way of lacing anything. :) For incredibly concise, helpful information on how it's supposed to be done, check out jennifer's article on A Festival Attyre.
