Yes it’s summer here in the UK, our five brief weeks of warm have come and we’re unaccustomed to such heat! But I know a lot of you are in countries where it’s hot all year round and corset training is hardly indicative of a cool wardrobe. A waist training corset isn’t just an extra layer, it’s an extra two or three with steel corset boning in-between and its not like the air can get in between the fabric and your skin like it does with a loose summer dress. Corsets aren’t really designed with summer in mind so we tend to suffer in hot weather and attempt to get round it by wearing shorter corsets or thinner layered corsets. Well I’m going a step further this summer…
Yes I’ve decided it’s time to tackle the single layer corset! Now I know what your thinking – you can’t corset train with a single layered corset, it wouldn’t be strong enough for serious tight lacing. Well I though so myself, and in fact I had a corset making tutor who taught us the difference between a corset and a boned bodice pattern was the number of layers; with a boned bodice only having the one (by that she meant the underwear type I think). Then I started collecting antique corsets from the 1800s and we were forced to redefine her definition of a corset as the majority were single layer garments! Yes single layer and we all know how the Victorian’s loved to corset train. These corsets were worn day in day out and having tried on one myself that was a good 100 odd years old (I couldn’t resist) I can report that it was still fairly sturdy. I’m sure they had to be replaced more regularly than our double layer waist training corsets but they still took a lot of punishment.
The corset pattern I have on the patterns page is of one such single layered corset – the Spirite corset pattern. It’s drafted from one of my original historic corsets and there are detailed pictures of it in the pattern booklet that comes with it. The boned areas are double layered if I recall correctly – ribbon is used to make boning channels, but a large part of it is completely single layered. So I’m planning to make my own single layered corset for summer and see how it fairs in the heat and under the stress of daily wear.
The other, even cooler corset styles I’ve seen a lot of recently are the mesh corset and the ribbon corset pattern styles. These both have ‘air vents’ as I like to call them. The ribbon corset pattern is made from strips of ribbon (as you might have guessed if you didn’t know already) which are only attached at their ends. The mesh corsets I’ve seen seem to be made from some sort of power mesh and I’m very keen to have a go with this fabric so I’ll be contacting a few corset makers and asking for advice on where to get the fabric and how to make a corset out of it. Hopefully someone will be kind enough to give me some pointers and I can pass on my findings to those of you keen to make a corset out of mess too. I’ll keep you posted on my progress and hopefully have some photos for you as the project takes shape.
