I’ve been trimming a gown. It is appliqued velvet with embroidery, and it is taking forever. Moda a Firenze tells us that in period the trim would be embroidered by the length and then applied to the dress during construction. That is very quick and practical, but my household has no embroiderer on call – we only have me, and I am no embroiderer. So I’m just doing it on the dress.

I really don’t like embroidery. I’m not very good at it, and it takes forever. I do however enjoy Things That Are Embroidered, so every now and then I have to suck it up and break out the threads.

That’s not what I came here to tell you, though. To give myself a break from the endless Leaves and Flower-Things, I’ve been making some modern clothes, because well, I need some clothes. I’ve made a couple of dresses, and I’ve got a skirt on the go (although that is taking as long as the embroidery and for similar reasons) but I found this chunk of fabric the other day and what it wanted to be was a lightweight corset. A startlingly bright, Hawaiian print corset-top thing.

Now, I’ve had a top like what I was envisioning before, but it was a store-bought thing back in the 90s, not made for me, and it didn’t have good support and it shifted around, and while it looked ok I guess, it wasn’t anything to write home about. I figured I couldn’t do any worse than that, anyway. So I cleared off my table and drafted a pair of bodies, early 17th/late 16th century insert-corset-here.

The interior fabric is actually a heavy duty knit that I picked up somewhere, but there isn’t much room for stretch as the outer shell is this light quilting cotton. The bones (which are zip ties) are sheathed in bias binding which is sewn through both layers. I dithered about that, but decided I’d rather see the stitching than risk having the fabric go all puckery.

I made up the Order of Operations as I went along, and it didn’t go too badly – there are some things I will do differently on the next one (there will be a next one) and there are some things I probably could have done more neatly by hand – I used the machine for most of it. I’m still getting used to the new machine, and I’ve been hand-sewing everything for more than two years now, so I’m rusty anyway. But generally I’m happy. Used about a metre of this cotton, including binding and lining the back.

And then I got the zipper in, and was able to try the thing on. I am over the moon! It fits like a glove, it supports and doesn’t pinch and it isn’t shifting at all. If I could do handstands, which I most definitely cannot, I could probably do one while wearing it! I was gonna put it on my dressform to show you, but alas my dress form isn’t me-shaped enough for corsetry, so you get me in bike pants instead. Sorry.

Now I think I know what I’m gonna do with that yellow tiger-print cord…