Ready? Set? Cry.

So, it's time to start this.

I have three weeks from today to make my entry for Foundations Revealed's yearly contest, with some vague ideas to boot.

I'm going with the Symington Pattern Ref #2370,  but to make things a bit different, I will be using embroidery to help "celebrate the curves" as they put it!

Design is not my strong suit, but I think I have cobbled together something that is pretty darn acceptable considering! (Please excuse the *ahem* interesting Photoshop skills. I nabbed the photo from Cathy Hay's tutorial on drafting this corset who nabbed it from Jennifer Garside's fabulous post about the pattern.)

From this morning, I was looking at a navy blue silk taffeta outer layer, with a coutil strength layer (maybe even a lining? Who knows how wild I'll go!). There will be external bone channels and cotton perle #12 embroidery so it has a tasty sheen. The thinking behind this is that it's an interesting alternative to the classic lace 'V' you see on modern corsets, and will help me practice and refine my embroidery further. I'm sticking with the front busk closure, but eliminating the straps. I was thinking of using some of my favourite British wild flowers, like wood anemones, crocuses and bluebells. The bias for the edges will be made from the taffeta, as well as the bone casings.

Last term at university, I made a replica of an 1810 dinner dress with (ridiculously) elaborate embroidery, both in scale and design. I soon discovered how important it is to pay attention to how much time embroidery really takes. Before last term, I had only ever made leisurely embroideries for myself, and therefore was a little surprised by how long it actually takes. In my defence, a lot of jam went down that term. I am not allowing any distractions this term or I will go full on homicidal. Can you sense the determination?

Some of my embroidery from last term using Au Ver a Soie silks

To combat my, frankly, awful time management skills, I have written myself a handy plan! A schedule to keep me on top of where I should be at all times.

If you look carefully, you should see that I am already technically behind schedule

Today, I began drafting the pattern up to size. The printer in the library was not in a great way, so I had to work from the A3 copy I printed off, with hideous amounts of maths. Safe to say my brain is now mangled.

Why, maths? Why?

  So after like, three whole hours, my pattern is ready for the first mock up. I am pretty sure some of my panels are not quite the right shape I want, but I'm expecting to do at least two mock ups so I'm not too disappointed.

Though this pattern was intended for cording, I made 1810 stays last term and my hands barely survived all the cording. Not sure they've even forgiven me yet. So I'll be using 5mm spiral steels, mostly in pairs, instead, and some 7mm spring steel supporting the back. I'm hoping to bend the back spirals to encourage the delicious prominent booty of the 1890s, but we'll see how many personal disasters destroy my productivity before I get my hopes too high.

While I should have been listening to the Student Union's presentation telling us about a survey we will be doing about the university ~ e x p e r i e n c e ~ , I came up with a design for the embroidery at the front. I thought it would be average at best, but I actually think it turned out pretty great, so I'm sticking with it (with a few changes).

~ f a n c y ~

Going a bit subtler than my original plans, it's just wood anemones, crocus flowers and a couple of forget me nots. Though I am pleased with it, the middle crocuses are a bit icky and basic, so I will do some fiddling with them before I start embroidering.

I'm planning to embroider all the pattern on the silk taffeta before cutting out and putting it together (why do I do this to myself?) with the coutil. This is to hopefully not upset my hands as much as I did last term, but it does mean I will have a very intense few days of hardcore embroidering.

With a cheeky look at my university's James Hare catalogue, I picked out a delicious silk taffeta. I had some trouble picking between Marine and Navy, but I pulled through somehow (ha). Safe to say, I successfully spent £69.30 within about two minutes (I'm crying inside).

Now, it's time to order the boning, eyelets, and laces from Vena Cava, and some pretty embroidery threads from Sew and Sew. By the by, if you are looking for a really good selection of embroidery threads and supplies, I 10/10 recommend Sew and Sew as they are super reasonably priced and deliver super quickly. Postage is £1. As in, genuinely, only 100 sweet pennies. And after all that, I just need to write 1,000 words of my dissertation. Just one thousand words. No biggie (send help).

 Tomorrow, I will be putting together my first muslin, ready for fitting on Wednesday. Fingers crossed nothing goes tragically wrong.