Rawr, Grrr, $h1T and all that Jazz.....

Just wrote a nice little post apologizing for being such a slacker and saved it to see if my blog was working for me yet and POOF! gone...I am SUCH a dolt. I shoulda posted first, prolly...duh.

ANYHOW! I have stuff to post, but am currently having issues with my BlogSpot...namely, I can't view it...dunno if any of you have the same problem, but IE refuses to open it. SOOOOO hopefully I will get a response soon so that I can actually post and see it!

<3
D

ooooooooh! Purty!

Looky, looky!!! Handbound eyelets! :o) *Draea is proud*

Ok, so this isn't all of them, but I am halfway done with all of the eyelets for my back-lacing corset! Only 7 are showing, cuz they're the prettiest. :oD

I have one more to do on this side (back-left side) the 10 on the other. Yay! Then to finish putting reeds into the channels and test fit. Then I will be edging the whole thing with the same spicy red.

Gotta go now, time for our very first SCA fighter practice! :o)

Ack! My EYE...lets!

Rawr..once again, silly thing keeps flipping my images, neckache is up to you. :oP

OK, top hole is a satin stitch with 2 9mm jewelry jump-rings (one on each side of the fabirc) to strengthen the eyelet. Thinking this is a good idea for the corset holes, since it's gonna have a lot of stress on it holding my squishy-goodness in and up... :oD My thread kept breaking until I doubled it over (it is embroidery floss, split in half) so that's why my hole looks all hinky. I think I have the hang of that one.

The bottom is my attempt at a button-hole stitch w/o the jump-rings as guides or support, basically me just trying to figure out how to make the nifty little lockdown knots. I like that, I may use it for things that will show like my overdress front-lacing. (After a few more practice tries, of course!)

Oh yeah, and I managed to get a half-way decent close up of my outer fabric for my corset, just imagine it with the lines running vertically, orrrrr, give yourself a mini-neckache for the full visual effect!

Off to measure out my eyelets for the real deal!

<3>

The First Pattern

OK, I give up on posting the pic right, six attempts and it still sits 90 degrees in the wrong direction, soooo...tilt your head to the left (not too long, it'll stay that way!)

The dimensions for this corset pattern are derived from the effigy corsetof Queen Elizabeth I and Pfaltzgrafin Dorothea Sabine von Neuburg's pair of bodies (ain't that a mouthful?!?) They are the only surviving 16th century corsets to work from. My pattern does not have the straps, mostly because I am out of practice sewing and might tackle that at a later time, but there are pictoral representations that show the same corset shapes with no straps.

The pinkish red lines were my original measurements (read :eye-balled guesses) and if you look really close, you can see my minor adjustment I made to the curve after pinning the toile to my scary dressform. Waiting on the UPS guy to get here with my boning material. Its icky out, and he's late....RAWR. Hope my stuff, er the driver, is safe. o.O

And she's done!

Ok, the experimental body double is done. And its just a little creepy. ;o)

As I was attempting to fit the corset toile(that's the flimsy blue thing) to the form I figured out some things that I could fix to make it better:

1.) Use the Poly fill along the outside of the form, that way I have some give to pull and pin things. Right now, the Great Stuff (This stuff hardened better than I thought it would!)is on the outside and the PolyFill is in the middle. So sticking pins in to hold stuff is a workout itself.

2.) I need a taller stool, this will work for now, but when I want to see how hems hang, gotta have height...The form stands the equivilant of about 5'3", more of my mom's height, not mine :oP (Love you!) So, I either need to find a taller stool, or I need to get a base made.

3.) I REALLY need to do this one over again, too many folds in the tape makes fitting correctly nearly impossible. Looks like its time to run to the store for more tape and stuffing!

And now...

It has decided to snow, again...but its like flour, super powdery...and as I watch Michael pull away for work, his poor little 4-cylinder Toyota "Tortuga" fishtails all the way down the street to the corner...I hope he gets concrete blocks to put in the bed of the truck today.

So, here I sit, alone again, yet another day without work...3 weeks with no subbing, except for 1.5 days in the middle of being sick and trying to make myself work anyhow...and getting sicker. Now I am not sick, just not working, apparently all the middle and high school teachers have decided not to take any days off after the holiday. I keep getting calls for Elementary, but I am not certified for that...so yeah. I work tomorrow, YAY! World History and Gov't teacher at the HS around the corner.

Oh, yeah, for those of you that aren't my mom, I changed my mind about school. I am still going, just not for the MGD cert (multimedia graphic design) I love it, want to do photograohy on the side, somehow incorporate into everything I do, be nice to make extra money with, I may still take some classes to refresh my knowledge. But I have decided to apply for the graduate program at UCCS in order to get my Masters in History. I love to teach, anything else I choose as a career is not really me. There's a reason why I was called to be in classrooms; I have to heed that. I love history, and I am good and teaching it, figuring it out, love studying it, I am a GEEK. A geek with some creative talent and a love for things "out of the ordinary". I can't start the program until next fall, though. That's stinky. So I have to figure out something to do until then, and decide whether I am going to teach fulltime and go to school or sub and school. o.O

Now the messy part begins.

So I started filling in my form. let's just say its taking way more stuffing than I think is really necessary...I mean, c'mon, I am NOT the pillsbury Dough Girl! (hush, Mom) While I am filling it I realize why it looks so "off" to me. The difference between Jessi's form and mine is the fact that we layered tape on Jess smoothly, without pulling, tight, but not squishing. Now, my dear Michael, in his eagerness to help (or get it over with, I haven't figured out yet) took my advice to make it tight a little too seriously I think. I got squished into many different positions, and none of them were too comfortable. The resulting form makes the "squished"ness abundantly clear, So...I am going to fill this one up as an experiment with materials and weights to see how to make the forms the most stable. Once I get it set, I will enlist the help of at least one person in the house that will allow me to be the nit-picky, controlling perfectionist I am about my projects. :o)


Any ways, here are the 1st in a progressive series of pics:


What you see here: my form filled(upside down) to about waist height with a fill of poly-fill (the stuff for pillows and toys in the sewing/craft depts of most stores) and Great Stuff (the foam that expands 3x its size to fill cracks, crevices, large voids(...appropriate, huh?) and balled up newspaper. None of these materials are really firm enough on their own to be sturdy enough for heavy dress-making. Mixed together, however, its seems to be working fairly well. I won't know for sure until its completely filled and dried, but I had to share :o)



What you don't see is a 2.5lb bench weight laid flat in the middle of the last layer of stuffing (approximately bottom of my ribcage) to help with the stability of the the form, I doubt that a flimsy, foam-filled squishy will withstand the pressures of corsets, farthingales, and brocade gowns...so, another weight will be placed right near the bottom before I attach (somehow) a base to close it up and balance it.