My corselette or wtf did I do wrong?

January 08, 2017

Hello lovelies,

I am waiting for new fabric samples and in the meantime I wanted to do a quick project. I bought the 1940s corselette pattern from Mrs Depew a while ago but never started because the pattern came with that strange circle pattern and without sewing instruction.
But what could go possibly go wrong, I thought to myself. (The correct answer is a lot. A LOT).

This is what the pattern and the measurement looked like:

Can you spot my first mistake?
I bought the pattern from a US site and thought the pattern was in inches and not in centimetres. And for the first time, it really was in centimetres and no, my bust is not 34 centimetres. So the first pattern looked like a corselette for a bigger doll. Nice.
So, I cut out the correct ruler this time and started again.

This is what my pattern looked like. As you can see the wrong pattern is still drawn onto some pieces.
But the pattern didn't work out for me and I came to understand it better than at my first try. So I scraped the pattern and made a new one.

I made the first mock up out of cotton. It looked okay but some things were just off. Especially that weird side part. So for the next mock up with elastic material, I just left out the side parts.


But first I drew a new pattern. It looked so much better! It is still shown on the pattern but in the end I also got rid of the weird side part from the front. 
Mistake number two was making theside parts a bit bigger because I thought my hips would need it. Nope. They didn't.

Even though I skipped the side parts, it was still too big. (After I cut out the final fabric I read on Mrs Depew website that the lingerie already had a 3/8inch ~ 0,95cm sewing allowance in the pattern. Peachy.) I cut away 3cm on each side and reduced the upper cup parts. 

I thought I was ready for the pretty material, but I was not. I should have made a third mock-up. 

Everything was sewn together and I made french seams because they just looked prettier in my opinion.


Until then I thought it looked nice. Then I tried it on again.
Guess what, the boob cups where much too big (yes, I know, I made double seam allowance but even if I had subtracted the 0,95cm, they would have still been too big.) and the whole corselette was much too big for my tiny 155cm ~ 5'0". I could have bitten my butt. This pattern was just a whole catastrophe. When my powernet arrives I will definitely choose another pattern and not use this. It was just so frustrating to use.
Okay, continuing. 
To finish the edges I wanted to use this lingerie elastic. But It didn't look good at all. It was too rough. I wanted something more delicate. Lucky for me, M. had some white elastics left from god knows which project. I took it gladly. I made bra straps out of it (tutorial for that is coming soon) and finished all the edges.
It looks much better, doesn't it?

 See this third seam under the boob part. This was the only way I could think of to make the corselette a bit smaller.
But according to M., he wouldn't have known if I hadn't told him. As if :|


And this is how my finished corselette looks like. 
Point 1, I know that I didn't use the correct stitch for adding the elastics. This is the reason why it's so wobbly at the edges. But I didn't care anymore. I just wanted to finish this most frustrating project.
Point 2, I now know how to make bra straps. Hooray.

Time needed: maybe about 18h?
Costs: the pattern was 7.50$, I already had the fabric and the elastics were given to me. 
Satisfaction: 1/5

Aurîs Lothol


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