Does This Seam Right to You?

Hello and happy holidays, New Year, and now February to all you lovely people!

I'm finally able to write on this blog! Let's not dwell on the exact number of days since my last post. All that matters is the mockup AND the final corset are both DONE. 

Why haven’t I posted at all for almost three months? Allow me to express finals week (which was finals month for me) through the art of the gif.

Fall semester can kindly f*** off. 

You know it’s bad when every single student, faculty member, and professor is equally messed up to the point where many classes begin with a group mental health check-in. And every assignment or final paper gets an additional week. 

I wrote a 20-25 page paper on mourning clothing in the Civil War South. It started out as a literature review of sources but the whole point of a history research paper is to make a point about the thing you're studying and I realized that very late in the process. My best friend had to sit me down and re-teach me the writing principles I learned sophomore year which I somehow forgot. There were many all-nighters devoted to pulling the jumbled bits of research floating in my head into something resembling a research paper. I just got really excited about clothes again. That should be the tagline for any area of my life if I'm honest. But if I have to read another Confederate diary anytime soon I will cast it into the fire. White people are awful. Alex, you're a gem. Thank you for dealing with my broken brain!

I failed human anatomy for the second time and you know what, that grade is going to remain an F on my official transcript. I am past the point of crying about imperfect scores. There are six hundred muscles each with its own origin, insertion, and action. And people with minds that are suited to medical professions can memorize that.

I learned the detailed processes by which the human body decomposes and how it's affected by various taphonomic influences like the climate, non-human animals, insects, and what a set of remains can reveal about how a person died. Hit me up if you wanna know about something called purge. It's real juicy. I memorized the lineage of our ape and hominin ancestors and then promptly forgot everything after the exam. Sorry, Dr. Lambert. 

Then I started applying to graduate programs! There are so many amazing programs out there and there will definitely be updates on those in the coming months. Fingers crossed! 

Also, don't try to get research published or submitted to conferences during the time of year everyone leaves campus. 

Then the holidays happened, I spent some actual fun times with my family in Mexico over New Year's where I did not contract Coronavirus but I did have an allergic reaction to my younger brother's allergic reaction to the jungle. Which I happily ignored because exploring ancient ruins and swimming with sea turtles isn't a regular Tuesday for me. It was worth it. 

TL: DR, 0/10 would not recommend running oneself into the ground, Genuinely shocked I didn't self-destruct. 9/10 would recommend beach vacations abroad in general. 

To those of you still following my project and reading this blog, thank you so much for your continued interest and support throughout the trials, tribulations, drama, and conflama of my brain. 

Now let's talk about the corset! 

*Time travel back to November 2021*

When last we spoke, I had just received the sewing equivalent of disaster relief aid from a professional corset maker, Michelle Fitzgerald. Her custom pattern was digitally altered to my measurements. And I cut out the pieces of her pattern with two-toned canvas material. According to the experts, it's best that the mock-up material does not have stretch. It's easier to detect fitting issues in the pattern and has similar properties to the coutil fabric that I will use in the final version. 

The seam closure method used for this is sometimes referred to as the sandwich method. Using this technique, I don't have to suffer nearly as much because the raw edges of each seam are enclosed by the following panel. Otherwise, I would have to externally finish around sixteen seams by hand. I would rather deep fat fry my face than finish seams this way. That's not in my skillset as of this moment. 

The only downside to the sandwich method is that I had to install boning and cording for each piece as I went from one side to the other. In earlier versions of the corset, I was doing detail work prior to assembly and I could do it from any angle. But in order to save more time overall, I had to unlearn a lot of what I taught myself. 

It's hard to describe and, for all our sakes, those who wish to know more should simply follow Morgan Donner's tutorial here. Her sandwich method explanation begins eight minutes into the video. And Michelle just posted an entire video to her Youtube channel specifically on how to make the Pretty Housemaid corset.

Boning and cording cannot be pre-installed with the sandwich method. But it will be nicer to not worry about finishing raw edges later on.

My ridiculous candy-colored creation is now wearable and I couldn't be more pleased. The stitching is a little rough but it doesn't matter, does it? 

It's like a hug that's too tight and never-ending!

I left the edges unfinished while cutting out the pieces of the final version which turned into a stabbing of my armpits.

My wonderful grandmother found out that I was making another corset after the mockup and she almost had an intervention right then and there on a facetime call. 

"Rachel, does that corset work?"

"...Yes?"

"Then WHY in God's name are you making ANOTHER one?" 

Because I'm insane, Grandma. Because I'm insane. And the mockup was to see if it would even work. It only took since August. 

This post has us caught up only until late December of 2021. Stay tuned for the upcoming January 2022 post to see how I almost ran myself into the ground to finish the actual corset. And some fun details about what a corset feels like, how the new semester is going, and my recent adventure to Mexico! Also, I have some exciting news about a magazine article featuring this project!