I decided to make another set of underwear. I wanted a chemise with sleeves, a corset of coutil (which I fell in love with while making the Picnic Dress Corset) and a narrower petticoat since my 1863 dress has a narrower skirt than my first dress.
My new set of underwear. I'm wearing my Regency shift instead of my new 1860s chemise because I did the fitting for my 1863 dress over this shift and it doesn't fit over the fuller 1860s chemise. I couldn't find the chemise while I was sewing so substituted this one for the fittings. I was a little nervous until I realized what was going on when I tried the dress on over the 1860s chemise and it didn't fit. Fortunately using this one isn't a problem :)
The hoop and petticoat. The hoop is the same one pictured on my first Mid Nineteenth Century Underwear page. I made a few changes to the corset since the last pictures. I noticed that my waist grew two inches when I put it on. I looked at the corset and realized that the stiff boning I was using wasn't bending at my waist. So I took most of the boning out and replaced it with thinner steel boning. I needed to replace 2 bones with featherweight boning since I didn't have the thinner steel in the right length and didn't want to have to place an order for just two bones. And wanted to finish the corset that night :) Anyway, I'm much happier with it now...
My new corset. Once again, with the Laughing Moon Silverado Corset pattern. I used the same adjusted pattern that I used for the picnic dress corset, with the bust gores drafted in and a slightly shorter length. The embroidered silk is from Designer Fabrics Online. I considered making a plain white corset, but that didn't seem as fun. The corset itself is made of a double layer of coutil. The binding is china silk that I dyed pink.
The back. As you can see, I didn't get my chemise positioned perfectly under the corset. Oh well :) It uses 24 white eyelets, which my mother was nice enough to help me set. It ties at the waist and hips. This makes it easy to adjust the waist after the corset is on.
My new chemise, I made it in one night from instructions from Elizabeth Stewart Clark's website. The directions were very easy to follow. The only change I made was to make the chemise narrower, instead of using an 18" base, I used a 14" base. This is the first thing that I've done entirely by machine. Except for sewing the button on, that is :)
And the back view. Much easier to see how it sits on the shoulders without the glare in the front view!
Koshka helping with the corset. He loves corsets, lacing them is playtime for him. Koshka loves fabric in general, though his favorites are silk, velvet and interfacing...
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