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I love integrated corsetry and how a dress looks on the body when corseted. The corset is always the centre of attention I think and I like to build the dress around it. When I have created a vertically pannelled corset dress I have often had issues with the boned coutil strength layer showing uderneath the fashion fabric - there can be a distinct unsightly line. By constructing the panels in a horizontal manner this doesn't happen - the concentric skirt panels fall away from the corseted section beautifully. It is difficult to attain too much reduction constructing the corset in this way but the smooth silhouette obtained more than makes up for it I think.

Well I made 50 $5 patrons today! But it's taken me 21 months to get there. It's not easy, convincing people that they need your product (and I'm not great at marketing!). I try and promote the platform on Instagram and Faceboook whenever I publish a new pattern and it might get me one or two new patrons each month. You lose some along the way too - always disappointing, but I do understand that a pattern each month might be too much for some, which is why I keep costs super-low. The cost needs to be unoticeable, not much more than what people would pay for a magazine or a coffee, and not so much that if they don't get around to using the patterns, they don't feel like they are throwing their money away.

I've just devised a short survey on survey monkey to see how I'm doing. It'll be interesting to ascertain if my patterns are being used, and what improvements could be made. I think I'm the only Patreon offering corset patterns which is good, but if anyone else comes along, I need to be competitive! I'll release the results here when they're in. In the meantime here's a reminder of the designs I've done in those last 21 months;

A competition dictates that you need to pull out all of the stops to create something unusual and stunning. This year I wanted to add 'technically challenging' to my entry to-do/wish list. I've been investigating corsetry almost full time since I went on sabbatical in January 2016 and so I felt I owed it to myself to try something very different and difficult - I didn't feel I would learn anything otherwise! 

Of all the patterns I drafted up for Marion Mcnealy's Kickstarter book on turn of the 20th century corset designs, it was the horizontal corset design intrigued me the most. There are very few horizontally panelled corsets throughout history and after a few toiles I realised that this could be because there is very little silhouette subtely that can be achieved by orienting the panels in this direction. However I had had it in my mind to create a sort of 'ringed' dress design that incorporates a corset, and a horizontally panelled design would fulfil this perfectly. I made up a toile in the original pattern (that had been a feature of a Foundations Revealed article) to get the gist of the design. With this particular design the panels are quite wide and contain darts at the waist to achieve more cinch. I wanted narrower panels and a subtle cinch so decided to leave out the darts. The grainline was indicated as being straight at the centre back but I decided to put the centre front on-grain. The following picture was my first corset with these changes applied;

How does this relate to the theme of insects though? It's all about segmented insect bodies. And it will be green, very green! More to come on my progress next time. #foundationsrevealedcontest2018