Sew Along Aftermath; Intimidation and Inspiration

The sew along of the 1911 corset has had some interesting effects on me. First off it was really good for me to do something different and challenging just for the heck of it. I cannot recommend it enough. If your life is feeling a bit stale or you are stuck in a rut, go find something to do that challenges you. Better yet, find something that is different than anything that you normally do, and try it. That thing you have always wanted to do, but have been putting off; why? Make something just for the sake of making something. It is worth the time, I promise.

Intimidation.

My fascination with corsetry of late is born out of desire for a challenge. I have to admit there is a lot to be intimidated about in the world of corsetry. So many people told me how impossible it is to make corsets, and just about every intimidating and discouraging thing about making them that could be said. You know what is impossible? Bespoke wedding gowns. I've made dozens of them. I don't know why I took it to heart that somehow corsets would be harder. They are not. They only deal with a small section of the body. They are adjustable! I haven't taken on custom clients, but I bet they won't be trying to squeeze in all the design elements of every single thing they've ever liked into it either. I have the advantage of this mysterious craft that isn't particularly mainstream or a practically familiar part of everyday existence.

Intimidation is cured by doing. If there is something you want to do, but feel intimidated by, try it! You can make it easier by not telling anyone what you are doing. Try and succeed, Yay! Try and fail, you learned something, and can try again until you get it right. It takes time to learn new skills. New skills keep your work fresh.

Inspiration.

Most of the modern corsets out there are the same basic victorian style. It made me think that that is the only way to design them. That is until I have spent some time delving into history. Oh all of the different shapes! Different shapes, different lines, different pattern pieces. Innovation. I was reminded of my designer's mind that is constantly trying to figure out the best way to do things: the best fit, the most flattering lines, where to draw the eye. This applies to corsetry too. I am really liking the edwardian style that covers & smooths the hips. I printed out the 1905 and the 1907 Savoye patents today. Let's see where this goes. This sew along has inspired me to try some new shapes. So much of what is out there is the standard victorian style, and since I hadn't worked with anything else, I didn't stray far from it.

I am starting to feel less and less inclined to make up a line, as to feel comfortable working with a variety of designs and present them as a painter would present paintings: you have to wait for the right one to come along. I am not so sure how that will work for me, but the idea of trying to choose one style doesn't feel right to me. And a big reminder not to listen to peoples' doubts about my competency as a seamstress, or straying from tradition. What tradition? We get used to things being one way without exploring why or whether they need to be that way. So onward. As my stack of in progress corsets graduates to finished pieces, I will post some of their photos.

1911 Corset Sew Along: The Finished Corset

I broke five needles flossing this corset, but it is finished. Well, almost finished. There are garters to attach to this. Garter that I had the worst time finding one piece of hardware for. But now that I have it, I am on the fence as to whether to use it or whether I want to add garters at all! Generally this type of corset doesn't have removable garters. In the sew along we were given instructions for covered garters; which I was all set to make, but now I am not so sure. Since this corset is so clean lined, I hesitate to add such a foofy thing. Plain garters are period correct too. What do you think?

Otherwise this corset is done. I decided to lace it with silver ribbon; why not? It is a little impractical, but it does the job (it holds everything in snug and sound). I invited my friend Shana over for tea, and she was kind enough to take a couple of snapshots of me in my corset in my messy turret..

I want to thank Jo at Bridges on the Body for hosting this Sew Along! It was super fun, and a bit of an escape from what I normally do. If you like to sew, this is a fun project, and all of the instructions are here in bite sized pieces. It was really fun to see what everyone else made; check them out in our flickr pool.

I haven't thought about an outfit to go over this for a Titanic reenactment. Any suggestions?

1911 Corset Sew Along Final Fitting

Once I put the whole corset together, it is time to lace it up and try it on to see if I need to trim or cut off the the top and bottom edges. By the time of the Edwardian era, corsets had become longer in their lines, and had more of a focus on smoothing lines and the S curve rather than the hourglass waist. The top of this particular style of corset rises over the chest line without covering the whole bust. The bottom covers the hips. The boning ends at the top of the hip so you can sit down.

I am pretty satisfied with the lines and the fit of this corset! The top softly hits at the bottom of the bust giving a little bit of lift. The bottom curves over the hips with a bit of a curve upward in the front and the back. The flat steel boning curves nicely along my body without stabbing anywhere, and clears the chair when I sit down. As a matter of fact, it is surprisingly comfortable. The one thing with this corset as opposed to my more victorian styled corsets, is that the long line makes it more difficult to lace up by myself. I can see why one would need a lady's maid to help get dressed and undressed.

I bound the top and bottom with plain navy satin. Traditionally, you might have lace trim at the top. I decided to forgo the lace since I like clean lines, and the stripes are busy enough already.

The last part is the flossing. This the embroidery at each end of the boning to keep it from moving around in its casing. The victorians had some very elaborate flossing, but most of the corsets in the edwardian era were more plain and simple. I used this corset as the inspiration for my flossing design. I bought both silver and navy embroidery floss to see which looked best.

Navy won out. The silver looked bad (too bad to bother taking a photo).

This corset has both 1/4" and 1/2" flat steel boning in it. I made X's over the 1/2" bones.

Next: DONE.

and on to the next thing

If you have been following my Twitter feed lately or have visited me at Crafty Wonderland or talked to me in person recently, it is no secret that I am working on an exciting new project: CORSETS. And you may say to me, but Kirsten, you have already been making corsets for years. True, true, but these are different. These are steel boned traditional waist reducing corsets. Each has three layers of fabric, spring and spiral steel boning, and tons of handwork. My great-grandmother Bachan taught me how to sew when I was three. She hand basted everything with a needle and thread, and I thought that was totally crazy and unnecessary. But these are all hand basted; they have to be for the pieces to match up perfectly.

The lovely absinthe green and black lace corset pictured above is my first of hopefully many. I am learning about how they fit, and techniques that will save me from tearing up my fingers like I did on this first one. I used an altered commercial pattern on this first one, and I have already designed a new on from scratch (in muslin form below). I hand sewed the lace on and hand flossed the boning in the traditional manner. I am not sure that I am interested in historically accurate in looks, but I do use all the traditional techniques (as I always have with everything else I make). I have been thoroughly obsessed, and researched this topic way too much in the last six months. There is something really satisfying about hand finishing a garment.



Why this, why now? When I started my business 13 years ago, I was making really crazy labour intensive pieces couture style. All cut to fit and hand finished with excruciating detail. I need to be challenged. I need to make my own designs that dance around my brain whether I have time to attempt them or not. This what makes me happiest. In the last several years, I have been relegated to accessories and taking on whatever project that offered me enough money to survive. I had so many ideas that never got to be made, or are sitting half finished in boxes or languishing in sketch books or invading my dreams. The dreams haunted me with the designs I longed to make instead of wiling away the hours avoiding the things that I had to make on deadlines that had me pushed up until the last minute..

So here I am. There will be a trunk show in the fall, date(s) and place(s) TBA. In the mean time, I am looking to try this lovely muslin on as many bodies as possible. If you are in Portland and have a waist 27-32 i would love to try this lovely muslin on you. I will be grading the pattern to fit other sizes, but I have to start somewhere, so if you are outside this range, I may need to try a later muslin when I get to that point. I am slow. Slow because all the things that I feel are worth doing take time. Slow because I still have to fill orders and take the occasional odd project to keep going. Interested? Send me a message.

flying iron

earlier this fall, i received a request to make a costume for a performance my friend lisa degrace was working on. i met lisa while making the costumes from last year's production of cocoon bird. she told me it would involve a giant skirt to be fitted over a metal frame. sounded intriguing. we met up a few days later to talk about it in person. the performance involved her crawling into and buckling herself into this skirt that she was to be trapped in until she had to fall out and get back in. she had been looking into ordering a 30' parachute to be somehow fitted to this metal frame that another friend of ours, richard cawley was building. i contemplated how to make this happen. at first we considered a long row of snap tape with a couple of separating zippers and several buckles, but after testing this, it proved to be too complicated for the actual reality of the performance. in the end, we eventually came up with a circle skirt design with a really long separating zipper to attach to the bottom of the skirt and the parachute with a few buckles for added interest.

i made the skirt part ahead of time, and on the appointed day, lisa came with the parachute and the metal frame to fit her and the parachute and the metal frame together into one piece. it was quite the wrestling match to get the parachute through the sewing machine, but we did most of it in an afternoon through trial and error.

photo: brent wear

me: what inspired you to want to be trapped in a gigantic skirt?

lisa: the image comes from two places: one was some work i was doing with my friend meshi chavez on a piece called cocoon bird. i'm not trained as a dancer, so you have to speak in story and image to get my mind around a kind of movement. in trying to get me to weight down my lower body, he told me to envision myself in an iron skirt. i just couldn't shake that image.

the rest is based on images from dreams and my inner life. it's an expression of the feeling of being alone, even when surrounded by people. i wanted my clown's universe to be sort of tiny and vast all at once, and to feel specifically alone.... like no one had ever been there, or at least had wanted to stay. but i had to look kind of glamorous too.... like a very strange fashion model or something.

photo: brent wear

me: this costume is almost the set for this piece. when considering the costume for a performance where the costume is so integral to the piece, what do you take in to consideration about the logistics of your vision, and how much do you depend on your costume makers to help in the actual function of the costume?

lisa: i am very very lucky to live in portland and know imaginiative and creative people like you and richard cawley (who built the metal portion of the skirt). so, honestly, i counted on the fact that you would know all the right questions to ask and things to do if i just told you the concept. and it worked! you had all the right ideas- like connecting the pieces of the skirt together with a sleeping bag zipper (i would have never thought of that one). i had a whole laundry list of obscure things... about how it should sound, how heavy it should be, and, most significantly, that it has to fit as checked luggage on a plane. both you and richard seemd to take each problem as a design challenge, rather than a road block. that was great.

photo: nathan gwirtz

me: you spent some time rehearsing without the skirt and just the metal frame; what changed once you had the skirt to wear and drape over the frame?

lisa: in one sense, nothing really changed... it all just intensified and clarified. the first time i got into the whole shebang....parachute skirt and iron skirt and all, i became almost immediately nauseous! because it was such a literal manifestation of a more figuartive feeling of being separated from the world. so, while it wasn't planned this way, the first thing i worked on the was the end of the piece where (SPOILER ALERT) i free myself of the iron skirt... while taking the entire fabric skirt with me. once I knew i could leave, it didn't make me as sick to be in there.

having it all together DID show me new worlds of possibility... "oh! i can do this! oh! i look like this." i didn't actually get to see what the whole thing looks like in motion until after i performed it for the first time (a friend recorded it). and i have to say.... it looks pretty amazing. i guess when i had thought about the look of it, i had thought about it more in still frames. in motion, it is really pretty trippy and beautiful.

photo: nathan gwirtz

flying iron opens in portland, oregon this weekend:

FLYING IRON
is self inflicted loneliness a blessing or a curse?

the audience sees someone "trapped by choice" in a very small world, an iron hoop skirt contained within a 30‐foot diameter dress. the piece explores the solitude of being alone, even when surrounded by people, utilizing music, movement, costume, text, and clowning.

the show is conceived of and performed by lisa deGrace, with direction from choreographer meshi chavez, massachusetts based director sheila siragusa, and master clown sue morrison. thhe costume was built by kirsten a. moore of piper ewan and metal sculptor richard cawley.

come see FLYING IRON
5 – 7 december and 12 – 14 december at 8pm
performance works northwest
4625 se 67th ave (between se foster and se holgate).
tickets are $10 ‐ $15, and can be purchased at www.brownpapertickets.com
or by contacting lisa at duchessoflevity@gmail.com
reservations are requested!

recommended for adults primarily, and children ages 12 and up. FLYING IRON is funded in part by the regional arts & culture council.