Hi, if you like swiss waist belts and corselet as some of you may know already some months ago I have made a pattern inspired by a pair of antique ones.
Here are a pair of photos of the item I am talking about, for those who do not know what swiss waist and corselets are: well, they are accessories much used during Victorian era, expecially during the 1860s (but not only restricted to that decade).
For my corselet I wanted to add a ruche decoration. The typical shape of those ruches was usually made with pinking tools. Pinking was a tecnique used to cut fabric in precise scallops or zig zags that was well known way before the 19th century.
During the Victorian era it was achieved both with specific cutting tools with a hammer, or with small pinking machines. Unfortunately both those kind of items are nowadays not exactly cheap and not always easy to find.
Therefore I made for myself a template to manually cut the scallops with very small scissors. Usually pinking shapes were similar to small intricated clouds, therefore my shape is more of an historical inspiration, but it is still beautiful and it can appear enough historical. I have tried to cut with zig zag scissors too by the way but the fabric frayed in a wink.
I think this template might come useful to many, so I am putting it free to download on the website.
In the pattern, as usual in pdf format, you will find: a one sided scallop, a two sided scallop (the one used in my tutorial BERYL), a big scallop for bigger ruches and also 2 bigger scallop templates that may come in hand for skirts hems. Simply cut the template on paper and then you may use it as a guide to draw the shape on fabric with a chalk pencil. For the bigger scalloped template you will need to line the shape on the skirts hems with an other fabric, or with a binding.
Here is the pattern, this time it does not have a specific tutorial :
Some plates of antique dresses with scallops in their decorations or hems:
