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With the imminent announcement of the themes for the 2017/18 Foundations Revealed corset making competition, I have chosen to start my dress diary a little early. I'm hoping this encourages me to actually keep it up to date for once!

Although the themes have not been announced I am going to try and set myself a couple of rules in advance (they may have to change, but we will see)

• I'd really like to make this for myself. I haven't been making things for myself for a while, and I am determined to add a couple of corsets to my collection now I am capable of sewing to a higher standard than a few years ago. 
• I have a couple of fabrics in my stash that I am tentatively earmarking as using for this - they're colours I would never normally work in, and I have found this is how I usually produce the work I love the most. If none of them work for the theme when it's announce I will change my mind. If not, I will stick to this one!
• I will not make something boring. I want to push the boat out this year, because I am always disappointed when I don't get runner up. I don't think I'm likely to win, because I'm not really good at thinking outside the box and the winners are always ingenious, but my goal is to earn runner up one year. This means not making something as plain as what I normally enter. Whilst I have been happy with my entries for the past 2 years, I have also looked back on them and seen that I essentially entered a simple underbust and a simple cupped corset. This wasn't challenging, and no matter how pretty they were they weren't anything technically challenging.
• I will not rush myself. I'm in the process of losing weight - I won't just rush myself into starting this project. Equally, I won't leave it until the last month as I normally end up doing

I have also just resubscribed to Your Wardrobe Unlock'd after a period of 3/4 years... I have resolved to finally finish this outfit:

It's the skirt and overskirt for a c1880 ensemble, which I started about three years ago. The silk for the bodice has been sat in my workroom ever since because... well, bodices are terrifying (sue me!)

I am hoping the theme for their competition will make this relevant, but NF era has been covered before, so I won't hold my breath.

Maybe I can combine the two and make a corset which is suitable to wear under this...