An 1863 Mina Sebille Corset

An 1863 corset from a patent by Mina Sebille. It's based on a red quilted corset from the Manchester Galleries.

The corset is made from two layers of cotton sateen and quilted with wool batting. The pieces are machine sewn together and then the corset was quilted by hand.

The corset is made of two main pieces with bust gussets and a separate hip piece for shaping.

(The playpen in the background is for Lola and her brother Oz, who needed a little special care!)

Three more views of the corset. It's broken in since taking these pictures and is extremely comfortable.

The completed back panels. The boning channels are made by sewing through both layers of the corset.

The front panel, showing the layer of wool batting. It gives the corset a nice thickness and surprisingly doesn't add any warmth.

Gusset insertion, step one. Each gusset is three layers, red sateen, batting and white sateen. They're initially sewn to the red layer only. The edges of the slit are turned back and the gusset topstitched in. On the left is a completed gusset, on the right one in the process of being pinned in.

Next I whipstitched the lining to the gussets. I'm not sure if this is a period technique, but I like how perfectly the layers match up when you do it this way!

The front and back pieces were sewn together with flat felled seams. The red and white layers were treated as one.

The nearly completed corset. The hip pieces were sewn with flat felled seams. Then just boning channels and quilting were needed!