Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Bustles

One of the problems I encountered with the striped dress was satisfactory undergarments. I just couldn't find the right combination of petticoats, hoops, or bustle pads to give me the shape I had in my head. So I am going to make my first bustle! I have a little short bustle that I bought on eBay way back in the early days that has served me well to this point but now I think i am going to go for the full lobster tail bustle. 

And below is a look at some original bustles that I have collected images of from various auction sites for my own sewing reference.

My favorites are the smaller pads made of horse hair or wire mesh:


This is similar to my old short bustle:

And also the full cage varieties:

Then there are the longer un caged bustles like the lobster tail ( which I am going to make):




5 comments:

  1. I just wanted to let you know that, while I was researching bustle patents so I could date them better, I found that the sort of U-shaped wire mesh ones you have at the top don't seem to turn up until the S-bend corset does. You're not going with that so it's not a big deal, but I thought I'd just put it out there.

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    1. Yes you are correct, thank you for the clarification! I guess I wasn't too clear on this post which was just kind of a dump of what I looked at while trying to decide if i was going to make a full cage bustle like the one in red, or an uncaged version like the white one at the bottom. I suppose if i had put the photos in date order that would have helped :)

      Sounds like you have a great deal of knowledge on bustles or atleast dating them accuratly, I would love to have the chance to "pick your brain" someday :)

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    2. Sadly not! I was going through the patents to help my dating, but it really looks like the different shapes of bustling in the first and second periods were often created over the same narrow hoop.

      When I came across the mesh ones before, I had assumed they were related to just before or after Natural Form - I seriously just figured this out the other day, and I wasn't sure how commonly known it was.

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  2. Lobster Tail FTW! I was amazed at what a difference it made in the shape of the skirts, not just at the top, but all the way down the back. You can wear one as-is, or you can layer it over a bum pad for extra oomph. I look forward to seeing yours come together. :-)

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    1. Yay! I am really excited to try it :) and it will definitly look familiar to you because i am using your pattern!! it was your great post that inspired me to try to make one of my own, not just because you made it look easy but because of how happy you were with the significant difference it made to the overall shape.

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