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(Not my real hair. Or my real waist.) I think the Scarlett O'Hara costume turned out well! As corsets tend to do, it completely changes the shape of my torso, and also makes my hips look enormous. The baggy drawers don't help with that either.

Georg helped me tighten it, which we did in three stages: put it on snug, waited about a half hour and then tightened it as much as possible, then waited another half hour and tightened it again. If you put it on and immediately try to tightlace, you are in for a world of pain. But doing it gradually like that lets you get used to it. I could still breathe comfortably, though not too deeply. (I have deep admiration for women who could ride a horse or do physical work while wearing one of those things!) It did make my back hurt a bit, and finding a comfortable seat was a challenge. Still, I wore it for about 5 hours before it started to feel seriously uncomfortable.

Did I ever write up the completion of the sewing? I don't think I did. Well, I finished the corset. Everything went smoothly at the end, except for the 1/2" bones at the back. They have you use wider bones at the back edges because there's so much pressure on the grommets. I was going to use the white steel bones from my old corset, just so I wouldn't have to deal with cutting and tipping. But the white steel bones were made for a Victorian corset, so they were too long.

Did I mention that Civil War corsets are smaller than Victorian corsets? Victorian corsets cover more of the bust and curve over the abdomen. Civil War corsets typically don't provide much bust support, I've heard complaints about that, but I'm so short that it worked out perfectly for me.

Anyway. The white steel bones were too long for the new corset. Lucky for me the corset supply store had mistakenly shipped me 1/2" boning, otherwise I wouldn't have had any. It turned out to be more difficult to cut than the 1/4". The bolt cutters didn't work at all; instead I had to use the wire cutters on each wire individually. The problem was working the wires loose without distorting the shape so much that the tip wouldn't fit. I did get both pieces cut and tipped eventually.

After that the only thing left was to sew the edging on the top and bottom. It was supposed to have lace on the top, but I skipped that because I wanted a simpler look. Really I should have reinforced the ends of the bone casings. I thought about cutting little strips of the canvas and slipping them into the bone casings, but I decided that it was okay to skip this for a costume that would only get infrequent wear.

The chemise and bloomers came together pretty well, although they took longer than I had expected. (Isn't that always the way?) The fabric was already cut, but I did all the sewing on Friday. Started work at 9 am and finished at 4 am. I did take a couple of breaks, to drive to the store and to eat dinner, so I figure that was about 16-17 hours of work probably. That was even with skipping some of the fine detail work that wouldn't show. All the seams were supposed to be flat-felled and there were supposed to be facings inside to cover the underarm seams. I think that was to protect the skin from raw seam edges while the corset was on. I skipped it because the fabric was so soft.

I did make one major goof with the drawers: the pattern had to be shortened, but it had been so long since I'd made a pair of pants that I'd forgotten how to alter them. I tried to alter them the way I would a dress, and ended up cutting off way too much above the waist. Basically I turned them into low-rise drawers, the waist ended up very low on the hips. It looked ridiculous but thank goodness it was covered by the corset.

The other weird thing about the drawers, which I didn't realize at first, is that they are totally open between the legs and over the backside. This is, of course, so the wearer can go to the bathroom without having to completely undress. (It's also, I have heard, the reason why the can-can was so scandalous.) Obviously this wouldn't do for a halloween costume. I thought about just sewing the legs together, but decided that the ability to go to the bathroom would be a good thing. So I added snaps. Very authentic. It didn't even work anyway, because I had normal underwear on under the drawers, so I still couldn't go to the bathroom in the corset. Oh well, it was a good idea. I should have put snaps in the underwear too. I'm going to stop talking about underwear now.