Elaine, the client for whom I made a Lissome corset recently, has sent me some utterly gorgeous images of her wearing it.

You may remember my post where I mentioned that Elaine has scoliosis and some interesting body quirks where one side of her waist is one inch higher than the other, as well as one side of her ribcage being larger than the other.  This took me a lot of thinking to get the pattern right, but the end result certainly justifies all the swearing!

I have just finished a custom Lissome corset for a client in Canada who posted to the corset_shoppe forum looking for a 'real' corset, but made from stretchy fabric.  After emailing her it turned out that she is Elaine, who I had met through mutual friends in Auckland several years before when she was over visiting.  What a kwinky-dink!

Anyway, Elaine has scoliosis and some interesting body quirks where one side of her waist is one inch higher than the other, as well as one side of her ribcage being larger than the other. The pattern had to be drafted in two halves, but luckily Elaine had recently taken detailed measurements so I had all the information at hand straight away.  Even after accommodating her differing waist height and other differences, the first mockup twisted on her.  She had told me it would do this, as it had with every other corset she'd had made, but I had been positive that if it was drafted in two correct halves it would sit straight.  So, back to the drawing board (or rather, the graph paper).

After angling the busk and lacing panels the second mockup sat where it was supposed to finally.  Now I just needed to alter some of the seam lines to maintain reasonable symmetry.  This was a little tricky too as I couldn't just remove 2cm from one panel and add it to the other, as suddenly there would be one giant curve being sewn next to a straight line, which would have done weird things.  After much banging of my head against the wall I think the final product looks pretty good and will fit her beautifully.