Current mood:	creative
Current music:	my brain exploding
Entry tags:	patterns, technique

Pink and purple bride - making the bodice pattern


After measuring the client, I took the Victorian corset pattern in my book

Click to enlarge any photo in this post

and photocopied it up to life size (conveniently, it has a scale in the bottom right hand corner of the diagram so I could work out that 1/4" represented 1". So it just needed enlarging x4.) This involved enlarging bits of it on separate pieces of paper and then sticking them together to make a big pattern.

I scaled it up to the client's measurements like this:

1 - I drew lines across at the obvious bust, waist and hip levels of the pattern. (Actually I'd already done this in the book, as you can see above.)
2 - I measured the length of the bust line where it passed through each piece, and added these together to get half the bust measurement of the pattern. (you can only see half the corset on the diagram, from center front to center back.) Multiply by two, and add 2" for the gap at the back of the corset when it's laced, and you find out that this 1880's pattern was for a woman of 34" bust.
3 - Repeat for waist (24.5") and hips (28.25").
4 - (beginners can ignore this) I actually did the front half and back half of the bust separately, knowing that the back size of the 1880's woman was not necessarily proportional to my client's. I didn't bother for waist and hips, though.
5 - I noted that the vertical distance between bust and waist lines is slightly less on my client than on the pattern, so I drew a new bust line below the first that would be the new bust line for the client.
6 - I divided client's bust measurement by the pattern's bust and got 1.4, meaning that the client has a bust size 1.4 times the pattern size. Repeated for waist (1.9 x pattern) and hip (2 x pattern).
7 - I placed a piece of tracing paper over one section of the pattern, and traced the 1880's pattern piece, the (new) bust line, and waist and hip lines.
8 - I measured the (old) bust line through that section of the pattern again, and multiplied it by 1.4. I made marks on the tracing paper either side of the piece along the (new) bust line indicating the new width of the piece at the bust.
9 - Repeated for waist and hip, multiplying those measurements by 1.9 and 2 respectively.
10 - I repeated steps 7, 8 and 9 with a new piece of tracing paper for each piece of the pattern. (Keeping the CF and CB lines straight though, by expanding the CF piece in one direction only, and the center back piece by one inch at center back and the rest the other side (because I want the edges to meet at the back, with no gap.))
11 - I made a reasonable effort to draw smooth curves forming the new edges at the sides of each piece. Also made a reasonable attempt to make the edges that would fit together symmetrical to each other, by adding and taking away a bit here and there (where I added a bit, I took it away from the piece next to it.)
12 - Also marked, from client measurements, the height above the waist that top and bottom of the bodice should reach. (I asked her to point to the lowest point of the neckline she wanted at the front, then the same for the bottom edge all around).

Then I needed to give it a shoulder strap, like this 1660's pattern I've used before:

13 - I extended the center back piece upwards as far as the 1660's pattern. Conveniently, the width of the center back piece on my pattern was proportional to the width there on the 1660's pattern at the point where I had to begin extending upwards. This at least implies that all this buggering about might just work. Phew.
14 - I copied the extended part of the CB piece in proportion to the 1660's pattern, and extended upwards in the same way at the side front and front.
15 - Incidentally, I intend not to have two seams around that shoulder strap as the 1660's pattern suggests, but to have one in the middle so that I can insert some elastic between them and the client can raise her arms. So I added half that separate shoulder piece to each portion of the strap on the side front and center back pieces.

Here's the result, with which I'm moderately confident, although in desperate need of doing a mock-up - the dotted lines are the original 1880's pattern, the solid line is the new pattern. The dotted lines go off the bottom of the paper because the new pattern does not extend far below the waist, but goes up higher to the shoulder instead. I shall make a mock-up, and pray that the client doesn't laugh at me if I've messed it up.

(All my junk is on top of the edges of the pattern because the tracing paper comes off a roll and needs to be held flat so that it doesn't roll up again.) Did that make any sense at all?

EDIT, Sept 07: Photos of the finished gown are here.