The Purple Corset – Anniek Creates

When I bought this gorgeous collar a few months ago, I quickly realized I had nothing to wear it with. I’ve documented my attempt to rectify that issue here.

I started with a couple of sketches. The idea that the neckline should match the line of the collar was pretty obvious from the start, but I doodled around to find something elegant and sufficiently ‘vampire chic’. Ultimately I settled on the sketch at the bottom left. I wasn’t sure if I wanted black lace on a purple corset or purple lace on a black corset so I did the only responsible thing: I ordered materials for both so I could figure it out later. The purple silk was gorgeous though so in the end it was no contest.

The pattern was based on Royal Black‘s pattern drafting tutorial, and I got THIS CLOSE to being able to cut it from a remnant piece of coutil. Fortunately I had plenty extra in my stash.

I was not happy with this crease on the waist. So I unpicked it and made the waist ever so slightly less angular on this seam. It was really a matter of letting it out by 1.5 mm. So glad I made that fix.

Figuring out the placement of the lace was fun. I lucked out and found that exactly 3 repetitions of the lace pattern fit from the center front to the center back along the top edge. This made it pretty easy to keep the spacing even and do some pattern matching on the front and back. The original plan was to have a similar number of ‘points’ coming up from the bottom edge, but once I’d put the one on the hips it looked so good on its own that I abandoned the rest.

Stitching down the lace along its edges was quite tedious (and I improvised a freehand foot for my machine so I didn’t have to do it all by hand). But once I started cutting away the surrounding tulle it looked really awesome and it was all worth it.

Figuring out the placement of the beads.

I was a bit worried that the upward curve of the neckline would gape open at the center front once it’s laced tightly, so I cut a thin piece of plastic (Prym ‘Creative Sheet’) that can be inserted tucked behind the busk and then follows the top edge of the corset until the first seam.

The home stretch: after adding the binding and a modesty panel at the back it’s done! I wore it to the Wave Gotik Treffen (WGT) in Leipzig last weekend 🙂