A Corset Tale of Woe…

You might want to sit down for this one….it’s probably every corset connoisseur’s ultimate nightmare.

Websized 1890's embroidered spoonbusk.jpgWebsized 1890's embroidered spoonbusk

I’ve been working on an elaborate 1890’s era corset made of a special silk changeant material in a beautiful magenta cross woven with royal blue. I decided to add a spoon busk and really make that the feature of the piece by embroidering around it. Needless to say it has been a labor of love and a few weeks ago I finished it and put it on the mannequin to photograph my results. I managed to snap off a quick phone camera shot to text to a friend. I stepped away to grab a cup of coffee before I got out my digital camera to take the real photos, came back and to my horror the front of the corset now had a spreading, seeping stain underneath the bust on the right side!

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I had padded out the mannequin with a pushup bra and I had no idea that this bra was apparently filled with some sort of oily fluid and had randomly decided to burst! This was probably the worst thing that could happen to silk! I frantically googled to figure out if there was a silver bullet for these sorts of stains. I created test swatches of the same stain on scraps of the silk material. I was able to get some decent results from cleaning with salt, dawn dish soap, and powdered citric acid but when I applied the same combo to the actual corset it did not work completely because of the unevenness of the external boning channels and the cording!
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I just wanted to put this cautionary tale out there so no one else has to experience this horror! Thankfully this piece is a personal project and not something for a client, but I would hate for anyone to go through this sort of expensive disaster at home! I’ll be able to recreate the damaged panels but a consumer wouldn’t be so lucky as to be able to repair something this serious themselves.
Beware the fluid filled bra!

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