MyFaireLady

My “Fancy” Dorothea!

1-24-09: As some of you may know from reading about the challenges I’ve had with my Effigy style corset, I’ve been hoping to make a late-period pair of bodies (PoB for short) to wear with my late-period French Farthingale.

Since my Effigy style PoB just isn’t working for me–it may be my body type or the style, I dunno–at any rate, I’ve embarked on making a new corset based off the one Pfalzgrafin Dorothea Sabina von Neuberg was buried in when she died in 1598.

In order to maximize the chances that this new PoB would at least fit me well, I decided to take out my “Old Faithful” PoB, which I made eons ago from the AlterYears “Easy Renaissance Corset” pattern.  I figured that between my “Old Faithful” PoB, the online “Custom Corset Pattern Generator”, the Tudor Tailor’s pattern for the Dorothea corset, and the pattern provided by Janet Arnold in Patterns of Fashion (which she created from measuments obtained from the actual Dorothea bodies), I could come up with a pattern that fit my body well.  After much drafting, measuring, fitting and re-drafting, it worked!  I came up with a pattern that seems to fit me pretty darn well.  I’m currently fiddling with the neckline, but I think it may actually work!   YAY!!!
(Oh, and don’t despair; pictures will be coming soon!)

3-25-09: Pictures!

And here they are, as promised.  I’m still sorting out the pics of the intermediate steps, but at least you can see the end result…well, kinda…I still need to get a wooden busk for the proper silhouette.  That’s why the end of the point is a tad wrinkled: no busk.  Anyone got an extra busk just lying around?  I’m not particular…wood will do…so will horn come to think of it…anyone?  OK, FINE.  I’m just going to have to make my own…when I have time…yea…

So ANYWAY, here’s a pic of the front view:

And here’s one of from the side (ish):

So there you have it.

You may wonder why I added all the fancy trim and there’s actually a simple answer:

I was bored with the plain yellow linen…it needed a touch of something livelier.

So I searched through my stash and found a remnant of striped silk that produced just enough bias tape to bind the edges and create the accent down the front.

But it was still missing something…so I decided to add a little sparkle and the thin silver trim fit the bill nicely.

I’ve worn these bodies for about 4 hours around the house and they seem to be comfy enough.  Once I get my hands on a busk, I’ll be able to “really” test drive this style.  I have some online sources for busks but I think I may actually want to try making one.  Check back over the summer and I might just have made it by then!

UPDATE! 3-26-09: Pattern Drafting/Development!

OK, so I’ve already mentioned how my plan was to combine a series of patterns in order to arrive at one that (hopefully) would fit well.  Well, I did, and it worked (so far)! What follows are a series of pictures to illustrate the process.

I’ll start with the pattern I obtained from using the online “Custom Corset Pattern Generator”. Here you see how I transferred the pattern obtained from the generator onto my cutting mat with white tailor’s chalk.  This is a nifty trick I figured out a few years back for re-sizing tiny patterns in books into a size I could work with.  Using the standard 1″ grid in most (US) cutting mats makes simple work of just following the grid and transferring the markings on to the mat.

After the chalk outline was completed, I placed a piece of Kraft paper onto the outline and carefully rubbed along where I figured the outline would be, thus transferring the design onto the kraft paper.  Here you see the finished product, after a little tidying up with more chalk to even out the lines.

I next compared this pattern with my “Old Faithful” corset, which you can see in the next picture, below. They’re remarkably similar, aren’t they?

So the next thing to do was scale up the Dorothea pattern in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion.  I did this in the exact same way as I did with the “Custom Corset Pattern” in the first picture. Here is a picture of the completed kraft paper pattern all taped and folded  together as if it were one half of the actual pair of bodies:

This Dorothea chick, she was built like Barbie.  Teeny tiny waist and ample em…shoulders…which is funny because you wouldn’t think that from just looking at the extant bodies or the gown worn over it…

But I digress…the point of scaling up the “real” pattern was only to get an idea of the cut & construction, the actual measurements didn’t really matter.  What did matter was finding a way to combine BOTH the Janet Arnold pattern with my “custom” one. The only way I could make it work was to sacrifice Janet’s pattern, so I cut the front pattern piece in half and spread the halves a bit to give me the correct torso length.  The back pattern piece was spared cutting and used whole as a guide for how high the back should be.

By taping these three pieces to the “Custom” pattern as a base, I was able to create a reasonably authentic-looking “Dorothea” style pattern for my modern body. The two side-by-side pics below show you (on the left) the placement of the cut-up “Janet” pattern pieces on top of the “custom” pattern.  The pic on the right is the exact same pattern sandwich flipped over to show you the “custom” pattern on top.  The dashes were added by me to help you see where the edges of each pattern are for better clarity.

 

Cool, huh? But I should warn you: I’ve just condensed a WHOLE SATURDAY’s worth of work in a few paragraphs.  The actual process involved comparing the three patterns I’ve already shown you with my ill-fitting Effigy corset and the TT’s Dorothea pattern in untold combinations until I settled with the one described above.  I dunno what it is about the TT patterns, but they just DON’T fit my proportions, even with TONS of re-drafting.  I did use the TT pattern as a reference, but the real credit for a good fitting PoB needs to go to the “Custom Corset Pattern Generator” and the late Janet Arnold.  Thanks, Ladies!

NEXT TIME: Construction pics!