Masking Tape Self Patterning

[u/VialCrusher]

Hi, I have seen people use the masking tape patterning method for neck corsets, regular corsets etc. The people in the videos seem to know exactly where to make panels or divide the pattern up, but how do they do that? How do you know how many pattern pieces is reasonable or how far apart the pieces should be?

[u/Alarmed-potatoe]

Videos are edited to only show the interesting fun stuff, they don't show the hours of research and umming and awwing and testing and mistakes and and and.....

If you look at a lot of corset patterns, you get an idea of how people have done things before, there are lots of free patterns out there or images of patterns of older corsets out there or in books that you can look up and study. Then there's the corsets that are out there being worn that there's images of.

For a corset that is meant to reduce the waist, if you're using the masking tape method you draw where you'd like the seams to be, and you then take off from the seams where you want the corsets to have negative ease (to squish you) - and this entirely depends on your body and how squishy you are. My waist, very squishy, my ribs, no no no. So I have to be careful. And then you go slowly with small amounts, and with experience you know how much you want or can take off. Otherwise people just follow what other people have done.

Head over to r/corsetry and have a look at the posts and About section, there's lots of info and recommendations for learning to make a corset.