I can't claim anything here but the craftsmanship. The fabric was chosen (and dyed, I think) by
rowangolightly and the pattern is Simplicity 9769 (altered slightly at bust and hip).The brocade is WonderUndered to coutil and I found that the hip curve is more extreme than I am used to, so flat felling wasn't really feasible. Instead, I double stitched each load bearing seam, folded each seam allowance under itself (as if each were the wrapping part of a flat fell) and sewed them down, to bind in the raw edges. Then I sewed boning tape over the seam, spanning it, so as to take some of the strain.
I really don't want to talk about what was involved in getting the front (busk-bearing) piece sewn to the second piece. We are talking 3 (actually, 6) layers of fabric here. One entire case of needles, when I hadn't broken a single one up to then. No, not even when sewing in the busk. O.O Needless to say THOSE seams don't have boning tape on them.
There are eighteen 1/4 in flat bones throughout and two (because there wasn't room for four) 1/2 in flat bones at the grommet edge.
Okay on to the pictures
Here we have the front, of course. Pillows just don't fill out the hips well, you will have to imagine.
Here's it's even more obvious I didn't get the corset on the pillows straight. :p And I should have placed the bunny ears at least one set of grommets up. Take note,
rowangolightly, you want the ears between the fifth and sixth grommets up (or the tenth and eleventh grommets down). I think they could even go up one more than that. I seem to have placed a grommet pair right at the waist. The lace was just something I had lying around. rowangolightly will of course pick her own and I have great faith in her ability to lace up a corset. ;) The uneven gap is because I just HAD to give the ears one more tug before tying off and didn't pull in the extra slack from the top.
What can I say, it's a side picture.
I had to resist my tendency to try to match patterns here, as I was working with a limited supply of fabric, And this corset pattern isn't really very conducive to matching, anyway. I contented myself with just lining up the top edges of the pattern pieces as I was cutting. I believe I will try that with the waist from now on.
