It isn't as nice to look at yet as I would prefer, especially laying flat, but it is perfectly functional and will be hopefully long-lasting. Flossing is to come! I am also really excited about the multi-era shape it gives me, being just a little longer than your typical 1860's corsets.
I found that I really liked working with the coutil, but only once I handled it a lot. At first, even coming out of the washing machine and dryer it was really stiff, like canvas. But, by the time it was done, it was much more pliable. I'm also happy that I chose to line with twill instead of coutil, because now I have a lot of coutil left over. The twill did make me pretty angry, because I could have sworn it was stretching just by me handling it...
Moving on from unhappy thoughts. The time it took to rip apart my old corset, turn it into a pattern, and fiddle with the mockup was 15 hours, a lot of which was spent getting the back straight. It's pretty straight, even though it doesn't look so in the picture. Total time to completion was 32.5 hours.
One problem which was a little weird was that the front kept making a weird bubble. Let me show you what I mean; see that funny lump just to the left of the boning channel?
I'm not actually shaped like that. It took quite a lot of ripping out the boning channels and repositioning to fix it, until finally I just went in and shaved off that bit. That fixed it, mostly. I think what happened is I was really paranoid about making sure that it was tight enough right against my rib cage, and I went a little crazy with the cupped flare, making it go more out suddenly than it needed to be. It isn't perfect, but we're getting there.
There are a couple things which I may need to go in and fix; I'm not sure yet about the front length at the top, if it's too high or not. I'll be wearing it this weekend, so I'll get an idea of how practical the entire garment is.
I got a lot of good advice from Elizabeth Clark (HUGE thanks!), and I can't even say how helpful it was!
AAnnnnd.....just because....here is a sneak peek at what I may or may not have just bought 6 yards of....
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