Tools

What I'm using to sew a corset

Most of the goodies.

Just a few things

So, starting in the top left is my dressmaking form, purchased MANY years ago at a ridiculous discount from Lincraft, mainly because it was the "big girl" one, and they had too many. It's been in the roof for a few years, but it's back now.

Clockwise on we have "fashion fabric", or the decorative layer of the corset. I have some black cotton twill and the rest are scraps from previous projects. For the smaller bits, I have enough to make one or two panels in colour, which would suit me best anyway.

On top is a bundle of satin bias binding and a long red satin ribbon for lacing.

There is a roll of black gross-grain ribbon to act as "waist tape" to reinforce through the middle of the corset.  I can ALWAYS use more black.

The fabric marking pencils are white, especially to use on all my black material. The odds of me making a light coloured corset (at least for myself) are non-existent, so I didn't worry about darker ones (and normal pencils work fine).

Fray-stop is the next around, which seems to be some sort of thinned superglue.  You put it around the eyelet holes to prevent any breakages running (or on any cut seams that you can't finish in another way).

The glue stick is a special one for temporarily attaching fabric to fabric. How it's different to a regular glue stick I don't know but it should be handy for gluing boning channels into place before sewing.

The freezer paper is a new one. Apparently you can trace the pattern on the dull side, cut it out, iron it plastic side down to the fabric, then sew over it and rip it away when you're finished. Good for transferring details like boning channels precisely. It's readily available in the US but unknown here in Australia.  You can buy it by the metre from Spotlight. I bought the six metres left in the roll so the lady kindly gave me the box.

The checked thing is an tailors ham, used for ironing seams inside sleeves, but also good for pinning/flatlining on the "roll-of-cloth" so that you don't get wrinkling around the body.

The unpicker the little white thing at the bottom. 'Nuff said.

We have more bias binding, this time narrow black polycotton, which is used for creating "fake" boning channels or tidying edges.

The yellow sicks are pressing bars for making long tubes of boning channel. The white sticks are cable-ties, which are great temporary bones, or even permanent ones if you were just going to make a costume corset.

Then we move back over to the sewing machine needles. Lots of sewing machine needles. Because sewing machine needles break when you hit steel bones. I wear glasses, otherwise there would be a pair of safety glasses in this photo as well.

The white tape stuff is actually iron-on interfacing, good for sticking bits together before stitching.

And finally the cutting wheel and cutting mat. I've always used scissors to cut material up until now (missing from this pic) but people seem to rave over the precision of cutting with a roller instead. I'll give it a go.

Now really, I need somewhere to store all this stuff. I'll have one of these from Bunnings please.

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