Making the Pink Suspender Corset – Part 1

Finally found some time to carry on with this project; a pink corset with suspenders built in…

I started making this pink corset a few months ago, then it got put to one side and I forgot about it. I found it again while doing my ‘Autumn clean’ of the sewing room yesterday. It was under a pile of fabric as you might expect! 

So this corset is actually a double tester project as I’m trying out both built-in suspender attachments and a single layer corset. That’s right no lining layer! But why? Well up until a few years ago I was adamant you needed to line your corset and line it with coutil which is a special stiff, tightly woven corsetry fabric specifically designed for making corsets that can be used for corset training the waist. I still believe this largely and if you plan to corset train then you want a coutil lined corset. However, I purchased some antique Victorian/Edwardian corsets a few years back to study and was shocked to find they were single layered! These very fine single layered garments were used by ladies of the era to tight-lace day in and day out. So for a long time now I’ve wanted to make a serious corset training corset in single layer. So this is upholstery fabric by Laura Ashley which I picked up on a London market stall, no coutil, no waist tape, no lining. Very exciting!

I’ve already sewn one side of pieces together minus the center front and center back which will need lining on account of the busk and eyelets. Today I sewed the other side together. Above you can see all the pieces, this is a seven piece corset pattern, the end pieces have been pushed to the sides in the photo and the ones in the middle were all sewn together. I double stitched each seam with two different stitch lengths then pressed each seam open then toward the back.

I then stitched a beige cotton bone casing over the raw seam allowances on the inside to finish the seams off nicely, hiding the raw edges. You can see the inside in the image below.

I now have two sides like this, next step will be to insert the busk; for which I will need to use two layers and the same for the eyelets. If you were to add a waist tape to strengthen the waist for corset training, then a floating waist tape could be attached front and back with the eyelets and busk.