Corset Pattern Review: Laughing Moon 113 - Women's and Men's Underbusts

There's a lot of demand out there from people new to corsetmaking to know which patterns are good and which aren't worth wasting time with.  I have an older post about different corset patterns, but it's out of date and not really in-depth.  So I'm going to start a new thing of writing reviews of individual corset patterns.

I don't know how many patterns I'll be able to review or how frequently.  I own a lot of corset patterns, but I have actually made only a few of them.  The corsets I make for commissions are always my own patterns and are tailored for the individual.  But I DO like playing with patterns, so I'll see what I can do.

There are also a lot of indie corset patterns out there which I don't really have the money to purchase. So we'll see.

I'm starting with Laughing Moon's Historical Underbust pattern #113.  I recently used this pattern as a beginner pattern for my Corset Making 101 workshop, so I've tested it and worked with it pretty extensively.

First, there are actually three different patterns included in this package.  One is a women's underbust, one is a ribbon corset, and one a man's underbust.  I've only made the regular women's underbust.  The ribbon corset is pretty complicated to construct, but I've seen made-up versions of this pattern and it looks nice.  As far as I know this is the only published pattern for a ribbon corset, so that's worth something.

As for the man's corset, the pattern looks fine, but I can't say how it really fits.

So what is the women's underbust pattern like?  First, it's very short, edging towards being a waist cincher rather than a full underbust corset as we usually describe things in modern corsetry.  The pattern measures about 10 inches at the front busk and is much shorter on the sides.  It's also not very curvy as drawn.  But because it covers such a small portion of the body, it's a fairly easy corset to fit to a wide range of body types.

I tested this pattern, using basic modifications to make it curvier so it would fit me.  I think in this case I made the waist two sizes smaller than the ribs and hips, and the result was pretty nice!  I also made it a couple inches longer in the front because that's the length of busk I had on hand.  This has become a nice little piece for fairly casual steampunk looks for me.


To show you a couple more examples of what this pattern looks like made up, here are two finished corsets from my workshop.  They both modified the pattern to their measurements slightly.

So if you're looking for a pattern for a small waist cincher-style corset, something that isn't too difficult to fit, this is a decent one.  The other reason I used it for my workshop is that the sizing covers a very wide range, which isn't the case for some other underbust patterns I can think of that may be "better" than this one in shape.

I also can't really judge how good the instructions are that come with the pattern.  Generally I ignore (and recommend everyone else does also) pattern instructions for corsets.  I think these are pretty par for the course for historical corset pattern instructions, in other words confusing as heck.  Find a good tutorial online (like one of  mine maybe) and use that.