The joy of corsetry

I've been cutting and tipping the boning for the sample with the external boning channels.

The gripping and squeezing action with two pairs of pliers is a bit tiring for the hands and wrists so I'm having a wee break to rest my hands since there's a fair bit of steel involved.

Tipping boning is probably my least favourite part of making a corset but I love the look of the piles of steel – especially when finished!

Trying something new (for me)

In the last couple of weeks I have been testing my standard pattern for modern victorian overbust with variations on torso length and top and bottom edge shaping. As I'm making test pieces I thought I'd try out various seaming methods.

It's a Muckle Front Page

One of my bags made it to the Etsy UK front page! A really lovely collection put together by Julia Wright.

Paper corset

Last weekend was another round of fantastic rugby games in the Six Nations. As I prepared to watch Scotland v France at Murrayfield on the TV I knew I wanted to have something constructive to show at the end of almost two hours in front of the box.

I decided to try out a pattern from de Gracieuse, which has an absolutely fantastic on-line resource for patterns for Victorian clothes and underwear. I downloaded some pages of the magazine with corset images and patterns, imported the pattern page into photoshop, started removing lines I didn't need but soon tired of it and decided to just persuade my partner (who has an A2 printer in his office) to print out the pattern page for me at 'human' size and trace off that.

The arrival of spring

The first of March brought with it mild weather and a definite sensation that spring has arrived. It's been a very mild and dry winter here and it feels as though we've almost skipped a season.

Not only is the first of March a notable day in the changing of the seasons but yesterday, as my computer booted up and I opened up the internet, I was greeted by Google UK reminding me of St David's day.

St David is the patron saint of Wales so, as Google encourages us to do, I found myself reading about St David, looking at images of Welsh national costume (as a girl I had a collection of dolls in national costume and a Welsh one was there too!) and flags. The Welsh flag is a powerful and dramatic image, with its red dragon on a white and green background.

From there it was a short hop skip and a jump to heraldic symbolism and the names and rules for using. Yet another thing to try to find time to experiment with!