Your Wardrobe Unlock'd

Draft your own Corset

Your personalised Victorian pattern

Now that you've begun playing with pattern drafting, I hope you can see the awesome designing and dressmaking power this skill can give you (Muhahaha!)

Clearly, drafting instructions could be devised for any garment, so today we're going to go straight into the classic Victorian corset, that most maddening of garments to fit.

I've devised these instructions for you based on corset designs of the late 1870s. I hope that you'll find the instructions as simple as before, but I've made one change that I hope you'll bear with me on.

This time we'll be noting separate measurements for the front and back "halves" of your bust and hips. This will help us to get bust size, back size and derriere size right.

Since a corset pattern won't require you to mess around with armscyes or shoulders, I'm hoping that you'll be able to handle this extra level of complexity instead, in the interests of a much improved fit.

(For extra credit, the more advanced drafters might consider how to incorporate this extra level into the bodice instructions!)

I won't repeat the equipment list since it's the same as before, but there are some differences in the measurements we need. On the following page we'll run through the measurements in full and then get straight into it.