So, if the flurry of short posts isn’t a dead giveaway, I’m having massive fits of ADD today. I went out into the garage (aka, sewing room) to make a corset for Tyler. I haven’t even pulled the fabric for it yet. I made a little smocky-poo for Piggy, picked beads for the green thing, walking in and out of the house 62 thousand million times, and knitted part of a scarf. You know those days?
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I went through my stash of glass beads, looking for some that will work with the sort of bog-scum-green color I picked for the Eleventh Century schmata. From what I understand, I should be using less shiny glass beads, coral beads, seed pearls, and little gold flatty-bits. I don’t have gold flatty-bits, so I’m using gold trim. Beadlandia, however, is just full of opportunities for me…
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Some people are really good at threading needles – thread, needle, stabby-thread-through-needle-eye, presto-change-o, needle threaded. Some people are maybe no so much and it goes more like, thread, needle, stabby, stabby, stabby, curse, stabby, CURSE, stabby, stabby, needle threaded. If that sounds familiar, great news! There’s a way to thread a needle without all the stabby-stabby business.
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You know those mistakes you make over and over and over? One of my biggies is with hand-sewing. I’ll get everything laid out, with my fingers carefully positioned to start, and then realize that I’ve forgotten to thread the gosh-darned needle. I’m not even kidding! This has to be the most basic thing in the universe, and I’m completely resistant to learning it. That’s why I know how to thread a needle with one hand….
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This is another of those “Duh!” tricks to speed up your sewing. I’ve been making silly little dolly chemises, and I keep running into areas where I need to sew 1/4″ by hand to close a band, or finish a sleeve vent. This happens in normal sewing, too, but you’re usually looking at 2″ or so. Normally, you have to grab a thread, thread a needle, knot the end of the thread, find someplace relatively hidden to lodge it, and then you get to actually start sewing. We can cut out at least two of those steps.
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Sometimes, you need to sew a chemise and you don’t really want to spend a lot of time on it. Either you’re out of time, or the thought of sewing just one more chemise in your life inspires a sense of soul-crushing despair. Anyway, I’ve worked out a couple tricks over the years to get the stupid things sewn as quickly as possible, with a bare minimum of hand work, so that they still come out looking decent.
Warning: I’m about to go through a lot of things that are simply not best practices. (That’s why it’s called cheating.)
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Here’s your 40 second visual rundown on just what an underarm gusset does in a simple smock/shift/chemise/shirt pattern. I have two very simple smocks here – one eleventh century style, a la Kohler, and the other more of a sixteenth century style, adapted from Arnold. There’s a drastic difference in the fit at the shoulder.
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An underarm gusset is a square (usually) of fabric inserted between the body and sleeve of a shirt. They give you an improved range of motion without a lot of bulk around the arm. There are examples going back to the sixteenth century. My mother remembers by great-grandmother adding them to her husband’s shirts so he wouldn’t rip the seams under the arm. Just the other day, I saw directions in Threads magazine on adding a gusset to a shirt. The problem with gussets, though, is that they’re a pain in patouty to sew. If you need to do them fast (or really really small), there’s an easy way to cheat out your pattern.
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My crafter ADD finally took me back to the eleventh century dress. I’ve undone all my painstaking over-achiever seam finishing around the arms, so not it’s ugly, but fits. Score one for the good guys…. That leaves me with nothing to do but decorate it, so I’m excited about the project again!
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The Conic Block is a great starting point for drafting corsets. This eBook includes instructions for the best way to reduce the Conic Block and for using that reduced block to draft versions of the Pfalzgrafin, Effigy corsets with a smooth waist arc (for comfort). It also includes directions for a Curved Front corset.
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