New Corset Training Design
Its summer finally and that means Comic Cons, this year I plan to go as Wonder Woman (I currently have blue hair, like the comic book heroine). So a nice tiny corseted waist like she had in the TV series will look spectacular! So a classic corset training overbust design is currently on the cards.
Here’s the design for the corset pattern, I’ll be stencilling up the W design etc to go with the pattern and this will be the next in the printable corset patterns range. (Check out the pattern page for the current patterns including my completely free corset pattern for a waist corset!).
Corsets and Haute Couture
A book of high fashion by Dior this is hot off the press and a must have if your fashion obsessed like me. There are some nice corseted pieces as u can see here in this magazine article I came across. But the whole book is in French so if your not multilingual your buying it for the pictures only, which to be honest is enough in this case!
Samantha’s Bustles
Having launched the printable patterns now its so nice to start seeing your finished garments. Theres nothing more thrilling then getting photos of your creative interpretations of my patterns. This week I was sent some beautiful photos by Samantha of two bustles she has made from the Pandora Bustle pattern.
Here is a picture but you can see better ones in the corset photo gallery. Lovely!
Corset Patterns: Bustle pad magic!
I’ve just finished making up the padded part of my bustle for my next ‘printable pattern.’ I’m rather pleased with myself 
it’s going very well.
I’ve decided to go with eyelets instead of ties so when you wear it with a corset you can use the corset laces to tie it on at the waist. It also means different colour laces can be used to blend with the outfit your wearing.
Had lots of fun making this – took lots of pics too so I can write illustrated instructions to follow. Gonna get cracking with the outer ruffle!
Corset Making – Custom busk project of Matt’s
Matt in Australia is having a go at creating a custom clasped busk. A very interesting project indeed:
Hi Kirsty,
Although I dont go there as often as i should, your site is growing, but as usual, cant help add too much just yet, I will update soon!
About to start a corset, and have a question… do you know, or can you give me a website to find out how to use the catches in pic:
I have 2 sizes of flat steel boning (13mm x 1.11mm, 15mm x 2.85mm) about to arrive from vena cava and will drill holes for rivets in the sprung steel boning and mount so rivets go through the boning. The boning will be weaker where the holes are drilled.
I am not sure which size boning to try first, the thicker and wider, or the thinner and narrower, dont know how much the bending motion at front over time will have an affect on metal fatigue. Do you think two strips of the 13 x 2.85 will be too stiff at front, as i think the 13 x 1.11 better if it is strong enough. I can coat bare metal where the holes are drilled by hand with tipping fluid, or something like it. Unless you can offer something easier or a better idea?
Matty
Hi Matt I’ve not worked with these clasps myself, where did you get them as I’d love to have a go? I found some pictures online of them on corsets if that helps:
Bras in corset making!
So I’ve started making bra’s… ‘But what about corsets!’ I here you cry.
Well I haven’t moved on if that’s what your thinking, no I’m just tackling a different type of corset; the bra/corset combo. Not the merry widow style with the bra cups attached to the corset but the separate bra with matching underbust – the type Dita Von Teese wears. This gives a nicer line in my opinion and makes the best burlesque corset.
So here’s some progress pics of my first bra which gives me the opportunity to show you the corded panels from my last post in use.
I’ve sewn the cup panels together but not the edges so it all looks a bit scruffy at the mo. Rather than sew a normal seam which would have resulted in too much bulk (thanks to my insistence on cording the top panels!) I have ‘butted’ the fabrics up against each other and, using a strip of rigid sheer liner fabric behind, zigzag stitched them together. Then I straight stitched some pretty elastic over the top to hide the join. You can see the reinforced join in the picture of the inside.
I used a stretch Lycra for the bottom of the cups which I hand quilted using wadding and criss cross lines of straight stitch to create the diamond pattern. You can see one lot of lines in the last picture before I turned the material round and sewed across them.
Dita in some of her many corset/bra combos
Corsets on the catwalk
The autumn winter catwalk ’11 brings a new dark and slightly twisted trend. All black outfits with a little S&M thrown in turned up. And in amid the leather PVC and lace were some beautifully naughty corsets. Here are just a few from (bottom to top) Louis Vuitton, Giles and Versus:
Attention Burlesque Corset fans!
- At April 23, 2011
- By Kirsty
- In Burlesque Corset
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Male Corset Training Corset
One of my recent clients; George has agreed to let me include the making of his corset on Corset Training .net! This is very exciting as most of my clients want to keep their custom corset private. But George is a very flamboyant artist with a public image to match. This corset will be for attending gallery events and public appearances; which will make it a very exciting project indeed! You can subscribe to my RSS feed using the button thats at the top right of this page to follow George’s corset construction, but for now lets look at his first mock up.
George is unfortunately very hard to pin down but after two cancelled sessions we agreed to meet in the city. Here you can see the first mock up of the corset pattern; which I call the soft mock up as I don’t put any boning into it – getting the length of the corset right comes first as I cut all my own boning to size. George wants a corset more for show to be worn over shirts than for corset training purposes, so I kept the first mock up quite loose. The length is fine but we have agreed it needs taking in maybe 4 inches as he wants it quite tight. It is to be waistcoat-like with a masculine silhouette, of blue embroidered peacock feather brocade, straight bottomed, and half cupped for wearing with padding when he’s in full costume.
I’m really enjoying working with George – I will get a female client on here one day tho, I promise! Work to be done for George’s 2nd fitting – hard mock up: Needs taking in further. Cut panels and remove 4inches width all over, cut and insert boning – all bones to be spiral steel except lacing bones.
Click on the images to enlarge
Mr Pearl – France – age 43 – 18 inch waist – 5ft 8in tall
Mr Pearl, corsetier to the stars
“My work is not about being fashionable. I do not follow fashion at all. I’m interested in an ideal, a kind of expression of elegance, which really has nothing to do with fashion.”
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The infamous Mr Pearl has an 18-inch corseted waist and wears his corset 24 hours a day, 7 days a week except to bath. But his work as a ‘Corsetier’ or maker of corsets is what really skyrocketed him to fame and glory.
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Mr Pearl is arguably the most amazing Corsetier in existence, his works of art can take several months each to construct. He has made corsets for designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Thierry Mugler, John Galliano, Chloe, Alexander McQueen, Antonio Berardi and Christian Lacroix. And for famous ladies like Kylie Minogue, Dita Von Tease and Jerry Hall.
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“It was Mr Pearl who laced Posh Spice into her wasp-waisted Vera Wang wedding dress, created Mugler’s more extreme and infamous metal biker corsets, and more recently tied Sophie Dahl into the ballet-shoe pink corset dress of Gaultier’s spring/summer 2001 collection.”
The Independent, 24th Nov 2001, Forrest, Emma E
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The infamous Mr Pearl is the alter ego of Mark Pullin, he started tightlacing at age 30, after seeing a photograph of Fakir Musafar:
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Fakir Musafar
Fakir Musafar’s artistic self-portraiture - ‘nineteen inches’ 1959 and ‘perfect gentleman’ also 1959
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Mark Pullin was born in South Africa, he was the eldest son of an English toolmaker, Neil, and a half-English, half-Dutch mother, Yvette. He has a brother , Grant, a motorcycle mechanic. His parents split up when he was three, when he moved in with his grandparents Hetty and Ruben Searle.
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“My grandmother wore corsets so I became fascinated by them,” he said. “They were always salmon-pink. She used to let me lace her up. It took a long time as there were lots of eyelets and laces, but it was a great treat.”
Mail on Sunday, 03 April 2005, Collcutt, Deborah
Pressure to conform led to a 2 year marriage to a South African actress, after which he moved to London, creating his alter-ego Mr Pearl and setting up shop as a corsetier in 1994. He moved to Paris in 2002 where he now works in the romantic setting behind Notre Dame Cathedral, designing unique pieces for couture houses. He refuses to use any form of modern technology, and their are few photos of him or his work – outside of catwalk and fashion shoots that is.
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An exquisit example of Mr Pearl’s hand sewn sequined Corsets:
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Mr Pearl’s Metal ‘Biker’ Corsets for Thierry Mugler, later worn by Beyonce:
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The Sophie Dahl Gaultier dress spring/summer 2010 made by Mr Pearl:
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And Finally, Dita Von Tease in one of her personal Mr Pearl corsets, (and I think we all agree she’s a lucky lucky girl):
“Corsetry is the deepest, most intimate, most enhancing possibility physically and I’m fascinated by this. Corsetry presents endless, almost unobtainable, possibilities, it could always be tighter, more beautiful, longer in the front. The limit is physical – outward appearances are endless.” Mr Pe
Dita in Gaultier’s a/w 2010 catwalk
