So I had some idea of making a longline Edwardian corset since Danse Libre performed a ragtime set at the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. Even though I had no plans to make a dress (wore an old one from Victorian Trading Company. I’m short enough that the dress actually is ankle length), I thought it might improve the silhouette to wear a corset underneath.

And then I had no motivation, which is why the corset is a muslin mockup when the performance was oh, 4 weeks ago.

Because I still haven’t figured out a way to scale up patterns from books in a non-tedious way, I went for the longline corset from Festive Attyre. Hooray for a pattern I could print out, plus a tutorial to sew it up!

Yes, I make my corset mockups out of muslin. I’m sure this breaks all sorts of rules, but I find it gets close enough to be reasonable. I expect to see wrinkles at the narrowest point (the waist), and can get a vague idea of where it needs to be taken in or out based on how even the lacing gap is.

This one did not work so well. The fit around is not bad on top, but I’m not sure if you can tell how ridiculous it is at the bottom. There’s enough material here to be a dress. This makes sense when I actually compare measurements – the corset pattern is 45″ at the hips, when my hip measurement is more like 37″. Yikes! Note to self, look at measurements before cutting the pattern.

I also had a hard time telling exactly where a longline corset is supposed to hit on the bottom. The good thing is it looks like there are options, ranging from top of hips to wayyyy under the butt.

Long enough to sit on.

Lots of variation here in length here.

The back length of this corset is 18″, while per my calculations, the longline corset from Corsets and Crinolines is only 15.5″

This pattern is also meant to be an underbust corset, but it’s definitely coming partway up my bust.

So, the plan is to take a half inch off the top, and a good 2.5 inches off the bottom.

I started out by trying to grade this “properly”, aka slashing and overlapping the pattern. But then I totally brain blorped – I basically ended up cutting excess off the bottom sides, instead of using a french curve to draw new seams. End result being that my pattern pieces ended up around exactly the same, but 2.5 inches shorter. That would have been much simpler to do… After I try it on again for length, I’ll start messing with taking it in at the hips.

And some pretties for inspiration:

Love the lacing under the busk. You would have to do that, because a busk the full length of the corset would start getting way up in your business while sitting.

Lace would have to be sewn on before grommeting, as the top grommets go through it.

I am planning to use silk satin as well (although not black).