I’ve been working on some of the undergarments for my Carmilla cosplay, mostly to keep me sane while I’m wrangling work and childcare and not being super comfortable leaving the house. I’ve made some pretty good progress on my corset. I had to do two different mockups to get the shape I wanted. As much as I want this to be a historically accurate Elizabethan outfit, since Vampire Hunter D takes place in a sort of futuristic setting, I’ve been taking some liberties with the historical aspects of the corset design. Mainly, I added cups to the corset to maintain the right shaping (Carmilla is… ahem… well endowed). The straight lines of true Elizabethan stays won’t work with the dress, so I improvised.

I also did more than one mockup because I found some perfect fabric in my stash, but had just enough of it to get by, and definitely not enough to make any big mistakes, so I had to make sure my pattern was good from the start. The main corset is three layers. The bottom layer is duck cloth for structure, the middle is white silk dupioni, and the top layer is a gold lace. I also made my own bias binding out of pretty cotton I had leftover from another costume.

Now, I’ve got the lining attached to the main fabric, the boning channels sewn in place, the tabs attached to the bottom, and the bottom binding in place. I’ve got some hand sewing to do to finish binding the bottom edge, then it’s time to add boning and grommets.