I finally took some pictures of one of the samples I finished at the end of last year. This is a black dupion underbust made for about a size 8. It was used in a photoshoot for the portfolio of a young hairdresser. If you would like to buy it, please email me at info AT volancia DOT com.

If you would like more details, including construction information, please visit my website at www.volancia.com and click on 'Ready-Made' in the content bar.

Black Dupion Underbust - Sample - $140

Fully closed at the back, this corset measures as follows:

Front Length - 26cm (10.25")
Underbust - 65cm (25.5")
Waist - 54cm (21.25")
Hip - 75cm (29.5")

This corset has been designed to have a 5cm (2") gap at the back. Unfortunately it's a little too small for my dummy so it looks a bit funny.

( More images )

I am selling off a bunch of sample corsets that I've made recently. I am boycotting ebay for being evil bastards, so if you would like to buy something, please email me at info AT volancia DOT com. First in first served!

I'm just going to post some small pictures and the basics of the corsets here. If you would like more details, including construction information, please visit my website at www.volancia.com and click on 'Ready-Made' in the content bar.

Blue Dupion Underbust - Sample - $160

Fully closed at the back, this corset measures as follows:

Front Length - 29cm (11.5")
Underbust - 71cm (28")
Waist - 60cm (23.5")
Hip - 85cm (33.5")

This corset has been designed to have a 5cm (2") gap at the back.

( Two more images )

Black Floral Jacquard Underbust - Sample - $160

Fully closed at the back, this corset measures as follows:

Front Length - 29cm (11.5")
Underbust - 72cm (28.25")
Waist - 61cm (24")
Hip - 83cm (32.75")

This corset has been designed to have a 5cm (2") gap at the back.

( Two more images )

Chocolate and Pink Underbust With Pink Piping - Sample - $150

Fully closed at the back, this corset measures as follows:

Front Length - 26cm (10.25")
Underbust - 72cm (28.25")
Waist - 61cm (24")
Hip - 81cm (32")

This corset has been designed to have a 5cm (2") gap at the back.
( Two more images )

Also, I have reduced the price on the below sample overbust to $180. For more information, please see my website.

Fully closed at the back, this corset measures as follows:

Front Length - 32.5cm (12.75")
Bust - 89cm (35")
Waist - 60cm (23.5")
Hip - 82cm (32.25")

This corset has been designed to have a 5cm (2") gap at the back.

While in New Zealand I got some great shots of some sample corsets and a some from my own collection. All photography is by the fabulous RSJS and I was lucky enough to secure the modelling talents of a gorgeous friend of mine, Miss Bunny Brixton.

I have lots of pictures, so I'll only post a couple of each here under the cut (beware, they're kinda large).  If you want to take a look at more (or some smaller ones) please visit my website and click on either 'What's New' or 'Underbust' in the content bar.

Three of the five corsets are for sale (blue dupion, black jacquard, chocolate/pink satin).  I'll make another post after this with details of these corsets.

The blue corset and black corset are standard designs that I've developed to make it easier for clients to select a style.  When I have some time I plan to make these available for semi-custom ordering where I only take the underbust, waist and hip measurements and make a corset from these, without a mockup.  I have quite a bit on my plate at the moment though and am trying to find time to get retail stock made, so this may be a few months away.

My dear friend Fern was married in September and asked me to make a corset to match her wedding gown. The theme was Victorian Gothic and Fern already had a reasonably good idea of what she wanted. We tried several designs and came up with the one I ended up making for her below.

This is a style different to my others and features very slanted seams on the front, an elegant waist reduction and a high back. It has an attached modesty panel with horizontal and vertical boning. It was made with a secondary strength layer and a loose lining to make the corset more comfortable and provide an aesthetically pleasing interior.

The main fabric is a burgundy taffeta with black taffeta contrast boning channels, binding and accented edges at the busk and lacing panels. The fabric was supplied by Fern to match her wedding gown. It has been laced through size 0 black grommets with black double-satin ribbon and the binding is hand finished on the inside.

I think she looks absolutely stunning and the corset compliments her dress wonderfully.

  

 

A couple of months ago I lent a corset to a make-up school student who wanted a garment to use in one of her photo-shoots

Unfortunately she put the corset on the model upside down, but I still think the photos themselves look pretty cool. I aspire to get such great photos of all my corset styles eventually!

I am selling some of my older corsets that have been hanging around. 

They will be added to my 'Ready-Made' page as I get photos of them.

The first one is a black satin underbust with red contrast stitching.

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I have completed yet another revamp of my first standard style - the straight top, pointy bottom Victorian underbust.

I'm finally pretty happy with this one and think it gives a great shape. 


More are located in the Gallery on my website (www.volancia.com). 

I am ramping-up to be able to do semi-custom orders of some basic styles, including this one.  Chris' new server will be getting sorted out over the next couple of weeks which will mean I can easily integrate online shopping into my website. 

I want to have several standard underbust styles that are available in semi-custom sizing (underbust, waist and hip measurements only, and up to to 4" reduction).  They would be ordered from in-stock fabric only, but would be made exactly the same quality as my other fully-custom corsets.  I'm considering having a cheaper option whereby the corset only has single-boned seams and no under-busk.  The corset above was made this way and it was quicker and easier to do and also gives clients the ability to save a little money.

Two days ago I went on a lacing mission to one of my wholesalers where I bought a 250m roll of corset lacing.  Hoorah!  I shall never run out now.  I also found out that Birch sell strong double-satin ribbon in many, many colours on a 20m roll.  Apparently this English stuff is much better than the Chinese, so I'm going to buy a roll and try it out for corset lacing.  This will make lacing options much easier for me and my clients.  It also means I can just buy the colour that I need at the time, instead of trying to anticipate my needs.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be picking up a new tin of plasti-dip too.  This has been a very productive week so far!

Yup, I've been busy!  Here's another corset I just completed on Wednesday.

This was a commission for a girl whose favourite colour is blue.  When she saw the beautiful shimmery blue fabric I had, we had to figure out a way of incorporating it into the corset without overdoing it and making the corset too 'loud'.

Rachel really liked the idea of an overlay fabric to tone the colour down and blend it in with the black satin that the main corset would be made from.  We also decided to add piping under the top and bottom binding to help bring out the colour again and to tie in the coloured front and back panels.  She also loved the turquoise ribbon lacing I had on hand specifically to match that fabric, so we added that in as well.

I think the end result is pretty striking!

I recently completed the following corset for a client. 

When she said she wanted something in silver I was super excited because I have been just waiting for a good enough excuse to cut into a beautiful silver dupion I've had for a couple of years now.

The corset is bound in black dupion and has thin black lattice trim stitched down the seam between the 1st/2nd panels.  It gives her a lovely shape and the dupion has such a great sheen to it.

I recently completed a corset for a client who bought one of my sample corsets from ebay.  She was inspired by the corset in this post, so I set about doing some designs and we eventually settled upon the one below.

I am very happy with how this corset turned out, as is my client.  The lower binding on the side looks a little wonky in the photo but that's just due to my imperfect wadding stuffing. 

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 made this corset a few months back and had always planned to get some proper professional photos of it to put up, but I am tired with waiting (my own slackness, not others) so here are some crappy ones.  (Oh Richard, where are you?)

This is a sample of my pointed corset, which will be part of my eventual standard range of styles.  I also decided to try out flame motifs.  This is an idea I first had floating around in my head about a year ago (possibly more).  It was relatively straight forward to make - I just traced the design onto the back of my fashion layer (PVC), cut it out, then stitched it to a second fashion layer of pretty shimmery shot blue fabric (not sure what kind of fabric it is exactly, but it sure does look and feel gorgeous!).  I think next time I will try stitching the motif to the outside as the extra layer of faced fabric ends up making it all a bit more bulky than I'd like.  Also, the white fusing on the PVC shows up a little which I think detracts aesthetically from the corset.  I'm very happy with the style of the corset and have worked out the wrinkling problem around the front sides with future pattern tweaks.

I want to make some more samples using motifs of other shapes.  I might try to do that on my next planned sample that I really ought to start on this week sometime...

And yes, I know it is reminiscent of the flame-themed Deadly Girlz corset - I actually saw that one about a week after I'd made mine, strangely enough.  I suppose great minds think alike, or at least think that flames are really cool.

I have finished another sample! The pattern is a revised version of the one used for the black corset with red stitching. I am happier with this one as it sits flatter against the stomach. I totally love the colour combination too. I have had this brocade in my fabric box for a couple of years and have been aching to use it. I am planning to get some professional photos of it, then I will be selling it.

It is made from chocolate brown duchess satin with contrast panels in pink/brown diamond brocade. It features brown satin binding with hot pink duchess satin piping. The binding is hand-finished on the inside and it has an attached modesty panel with vertical and horizontal boning to keep it flat and straight.  It has a combination of flat and spiral steel, 2-piece grommets and waist tape.  It is made from one fashion layer, one fusible interfacing layer, one strength layer and a lining layer.

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.

I have just finished my most recent commission. It is a gorgeous underbust made from red satin with a black lace overlay and has contrast boning channels. It is the same colour/fabric combination of a corset I made for myself about 18 months ago. That was the last corset I made on my domestic sewing machine and what drove me to buy an industrial machine. I am happy to say that this corset was much less stressful!

Here's another corset I completed yesterday. This is a sample of one of my standard styles that I am working on so that people can order semi-custom corsets directly from my website.

I'm really happy with how it's turned out and I have ironed out the design flaws that appeared in the Rose and Black version of this.

It is made from black duchess delustered satin with red contrast stitching. Black satin binding has been hand finished on the inside and there is an attached modesty panel with vertical and horizontal boning to keep it flat and straight.

( More pics after the cut... )

About two weeks ago I completed an underbust corset for a good friend of mine who was getting a civil union with her partner. I offered to make her a corset for under her dress as a gift.

Under the cut are some pics of it on my mannequin and one of gorgeous Arna and Josh on their special day.


The corset is made from champagne duchess delustered satin and features a back modesty panel.   I really like the design and shape - this was chosen by Arna as an amalgam of two mock-ups I sent her.

I have just completed another corset. There are a couple of wrinkles on the 2nd panel that I'll have to sort out with some pattern re-jigging, but apart from that I'm really pleased how it's turned out. I tried hand-finishing the binding on the inside and I think it looks really great. Quite soothing to do too, actually, so I think I'll be doing that on all corsets in the future.

Chris found the fabric in a pile of bolts at a clothing store that was closing down and selling all its fittings. I think it's really gorgeous, but what a bloody pain to match cotton to!!! After about 10 minutes pouring over the Gutermann thread stand I finally found a pretty good match though. I got the black lace at the clothing store too. It has a really nicely finished fishnet edge that I think looks great in the bottom binding.

( Pics under the cut )

Vital stats

Front Length - 26cm (10.25")

Fully closed:
Underbust - 73cm (28.75")
Waist - 62cm (24.5")
Hip - 90 cm (35.5")

• Front modesty panel behind the busk.


• Waist tape.


• Combination of sprung steel (around grommets and in the front) and spiral steel (around the waist). 24 bones in total.


• Triple-stitched seams.


• Woven interfacing fused to fashion fabric for extra strength.


• 100% cotton drill strength layer.


• Super soft 100% cotton drill lining.


• Two-piece grommets (size 00).


• Strong black poly-cotton lacing.

I've listed it on ebay and I hope to get $200 for it. Click here to visit the auction.