Wednesday 4 December 2013

Sheer Indulgence

Following on from a post I made about sheer corsets : Sheer Beauty: New corset design trends I was sent an e-mail from a designer in New York asking me about materials for such a corset design.

Well, it just so happens, that as part of my never-ending desire to learn, explore and improve my designs I will be doing some experimentation in the next few weeks on the different materials available to make sheer corsets.....

There are various materials you can use in this process, all with a variety of their own properties, and as a designer I must find the right ones to use within my designs. I will be trying out silk organza, bra lining fabric, crin, tulle and cotton bobbinet.

Each fabric has it's own properties, strengths and weaknesses, I'll be starting my experiments with silk organza and cotton bobbinet.

silk organza

Tea dyed cotton bobbinet

First up I will be trying one made from silk organza, specifically from silk organza because it is sheer and strong. I prefer it over the polyester versions because I do not want a shiny corset, and it is a much nicer fabric to manipulate and work with than it's man made counterpart.

There are a few potential problems I can foresee with this fabric which are outlined as such:

  •  I will need to make my bone casings out of an opaque solid fabric and into tubes so that I cannot see boning from either side of my corset.
  • I need to sew 2 layers of organza together (as if they were fabric and interlining )and work them as one fabric with enclosed French seams for stability
  • I may even need to stay stitch extra organza tape into the seams to stop the fabric pulling out of the seams.
  • The waist stay needs to look lovely on the inside and the outside, and cannot be omitted from the design without the stability of the corset being weakened.


So here is my organza corset at stage one, I have just sewn the two layers of organza as one fabric and pinned it to my dummy. By next week I am going to topstitch French seam the corset and add the lacing panel, put in a waistband and test it for strength.

Keep your fingers crossed.

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