Padmé Costume: Corset Embroidery!

And now it’s time for the most tedious and intimidating but most pretty and satisfying part of the costume! The corset embroidery!

Not a whole lot to discuss here… mostly progress pix. But, there is some important stuff I had to do… First of all, I needed a reference to draw those shapes. Padawan’s Guide provided some really helpful pictures of the outlines of the embroidery- it had this picture along with several others that broke that complex design down into layers. You can view more of them on the website- go to the Corset page on the picnic gown page to see more about it. I didn’t do anything fussy with it like printing it out to scale and tracing it or anything. I can draw pretty well so I just freehanded it as I went along. The interfacing (white stuff in the pix below) is what I drew on, but I had to be really gentle drawing on it because it ripped easily.

And then I learned how to do the long/short stitch- which is what I used for the gradient colors of the orangey scrolls. That’s pretty much it… I devoted a whole post to this simply because it took such a long time, and because there are lots of good progress pix. Literally, for 10 days I did nothing but embroidery. NOTHING. I suppose it doesn’t really count that I watched a lot of TV and listened to a lot of radio. I felt like such an old soul, doing embroidery and watching Jane Austen and Shakespeare movies. XD Of course, I watched plenty of Star Wars and Captain America too…

Oh. And the rose clusters, I did not do- I cut them out from my WalMart curtain for the cape and appliqued them on. It saved a lot of time, because people said one rose cluster alone would take them 3 hours. And by the way, I do believe that 10 days for this embroidery is record-breaking time! People have talked about the corset embroidery taking them up to 3 months. Though, I cheated and didn’t do the gold swirls.

Close-up

Another close-up

IT’S DONE!!

After that was done, I stitched the other silk panels on and then stitched it all to the rest of the corset, by hand, using the Invisible Stitch so you wouldn’t see any stitches on the outside of the corset.

And yes… the evil Hooks and Eyes. It took FOREVER to measure exactly where each one should go and sew it on by hand without messing up the position. Plus, it’s really hard to put on the corset by myself. Usually I get someone to help me put it on when I’m getting the costume on. And the silk is so fragile that the hooks and eyes can literally poke holes in it. Period corsets with actual lacing in the back are much better…