Constructing Your Corset

Part 1, Measuring and Drafting Your Pattern is located here!

What You Need

You will need the following for this half of the tutorial

• Your customized pattern
• Chalk or fabric pencil
• Scissors or rotary cutter
• Pins
• Needle and thread for hand sewing
• Something pointy
• Closures (rivets, buttons, buckles, etc.)
• Lacing (ribbon, leather cord, long boot laces, etc.)
• Boning (see below)

Boning

You can buy boning at most fabric stores or online. I use plastic store bought boning but a lot of people have been re-purposing plastic bottles and jugs as well. You can also use steel boning if you can find it! If you know of a vendor who sells this online, or any other helpful vendor links, please leave them in the comments. You will also need casing for the boning. I don’t use the store bought stuffs casing because it always falls apart on me. I make it out of bias tape or other thin pieces of fabric. Do whatever pleases you.

Onto the construction!

1. First find your fabric and figure out how much you will need (it will be different for everyone, so use some newspaper to figure it out before you buy fabric!) I used cheap muslin and black thread so it would be easier for you to see what’s going on.

Fold the fabric in half, right sides together. Fold it in half again so you have four layers of fabric. When you cut the pieces out you should have two sets of left facing pieces and two sets of right facing.

2. Separate two sets of pieces like the image below. The pieces on top are wrong side up and their mates underneath are right side up. You want all the pieces to be right sides together when you lay them out to make sure you have what you need. Now label everything right now. You’ll be sorry if you don’t! I labeled mine RO for Right Outside, RI for Right Inside, LO for Left Outside and LI for Left Inside. Label them however you want so that you will remember.

3. Now you can start pinning the pieces together as shown.

Make sure your seams all line up. If they don’t, like the image below, lay out your pattern pieces next to the original pattern to make sure you have everything matched up correctly.

4. Start sewing those seams! For now  just sew the three interior seams where. Do the same for the other three sets of pieces.

Now iron your seams flat as shown.

5. If you bought boning from the store, remove the casing now. Cut the boning to fit the corset in the five places pictures below in blue. You will need two identical sets of boning. Now cut 3/8″ off each end of these pieces, rounding the corners as well. You can cut a little more if you like as well, just remember that whatever amount you cut off must fit with the seam allowances. I even cut off more as I’m sewing the halves together sometimes, but more on that later.

Whatever you are using as a casing, gran it now and lay it on the seams and ends of the wrong side of the lining pieces. For the ends, place the casing behind the seam allowance. I used .25″ seam allowance so my end casings are .25″ away from the very edge of the fabric. Now pin those in place and sew away! After you finish the seams, stuff the boning into the casing.

6. Lay the right and left outsides ontop of the right and left linings, right sides together. Match up all edges and corerns.

7. Pin everything together (you can see the casing with the boning inside it on this picture, that’s the lining’s wrong side btw) but leave a gap between the three middle pieces of boning at the bottom. You’ll need this area to turn the corset right side out later. Its a good idea to back stitch with your machine at the beginning and end of these seams, so when you turn the corset the seams wont come loose. Now stitch everything together.

8. Trim the seams (only if you used more than a.25″ seam allowance) and clip the corners.

9. Now turn the halves right side out. You can use any small pointy object you can find (aside from a knife) to poke those corners out to look nice and crisp.

10. Press the edges all the way around. You can press the inside, but be careful around the boning. You don’t want it to melt. Although a little heat will help flatten it out if you find it’s curving too much. When you get to that gap we left back in step 7, turn in the seam allowance and press. Then slip stitch it all closed. You can also top stitch the top and bottom edges instead.

Closures

I used rivets on my finished corset, but you can use just about anything. Just be sure to allot for them ahead of time if they require extra planning, like zippers might. Buckels, buttons and other hooks can be used too. If you used rivets you’ll want to thread in your lacing like a shoe. A lot of corsets use four pieces of lacing (or two if the front is closed) with the loose ends tying in the middle. This makes the corset easier to cinch up at the waist, but you can lace yours however you want. Mine had ribbon tying at the bottom.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and please post pics of your corsets! And again, a huge thanks to Cathy Hay and Roethke from Craftser whose tutorial and booklet on fitting helped me create the first half of this tutorial, the custom fit.

Part 1, Measuring and Drafting Your Pattern is located here!