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OK, after the grommet problem was resolved next up was the boning and bone casings. I already wrote about making the bone casings, and sewing them in place was fairly easy. Just place the bone casing centered over a seam, then sew it down on both sides, close to the edge. I did have to go slow to make sure the stitching was nice and even on both sides. Not only for neatness, but also if the seam drifted too far in, there wouldn't be enough room inside the casing for the boning.

The photo shows one half of the corset with the bone casings all sewn on. If I do say so, the two colors look pretty nice together. Even with interfacing these bone casings are a bit on the light side. I'd be worried about the boning popping out if it were going to get any heavy duty use, but it's just for a costume so I think it will be OK.

Next was the boning. There are two kinds of boning used in corsetry: white steel and spiral steel. White steel is a strip of steel that has a white coating, so it won't scratch I guess. It comes in various lengths, and you just buy the lengths you need. Spiral steel is made of tiny coils of steel wire, with a metal tip on each end to prevent scratching. I thought the tip was to prevent unraveling, but actually the coils are crimped together pretty well and don't unwind. It also comes in precut lengths, or you can buy a 10 yard length and tip it yourself.

(There's also plastic boning, which I think is used in clothing where lighter support is appropriate, like prom dresses. But plastic wouldn't hold up in a corset, everyone uses steel.)

I already had a bunch of white steel from my old corset, which I originally planned to reuse. But then I read that the advantage of spiral steel is its flexibility. White steel, being a flat strip of metal, only bends one way, while spiral steel bends in all directions. Apparently if you're trying to create a nice hourglass figure with your corset, spiral steel is the way to go. Also it's easier to move while wearing the corset if it has spiral steel. Which is a good thing!

So I ordered spiral steel. For cost reasons I bought the 10 yard length instead of precut. Most of the boning in a typical corset is 1/4" wide, but I lucked out and also got 10 yards of 1/2" wide because they sent me the wrong thing. They let me keep the half-inch and sent another roll of the quarter inch. The delay of a few days was no big deal, so it worked out great for me.

Cutting and tipping spiral steel requires a lot of tools. The corset supply company sells a very expensive boning cutter, which I did not buy because I already had a bolt cutter. In fact I had a funny exchange with Lisa when she was here helping me tear down the paneling in the bedroom: I was looking for the extra pry bar, and didn't find it, but did yell out "Hey, I found the bolt cutters! I need those for my corset!"

Unfortunately the bolt cutters didn't slice right through the boning like I thought they would. It was more like wiggling the boning back and forth against the bolt cutters to snap the individual wires. Sometimes I also needed a pair of wire cutters to finish them off.

Once the boning was cut, getting the tips on was a bit trickier. If you squash them flat with pliers, the sides splay out. But if you pinch the sides, the top and bottom puff out. The only way I found to do it was to use two sets of pliers at once: wide ones on the sides, and then needle nosed on the top and bottom. Alas, I did not get a photo. It was hard enough just to do it, I didn't want to fool around with making Georg take a photo too.

The boning fit into the casings just right. A bit snug, but they went in there so all is well. And with that, the corset is almost done! All I have left to do is finish the top and bottom edges. Then the chemise and bloomers have to be made, but those will be easy. Actually the corset was easier than I expected. It was time consuming and tedious, but there weren't any tricky seams or anything. I've made dresses that were more difficult.

Well I was working on the art gallery site redesign tonight, but frankly the presidential debate was so depressing I couldn't concentrate on my work. I'm filled with a sense of dread and creeping panic about the election. Why did I even watch that stupid debate? Damn sense of civic duty.

Now the debate is over and we're watching tonight's Survivor. Ahh, much easier on my mental state. Armchair analyzing the strategies of a bunch of losers on an island is so much more fun than analyzing the strategies of our evil overlord and his would-be successor. I'm so cheered up that I can finally write up the progresss on my corset.

Okay, the first thing I did was replace the piece I had done backwards. I had to remove that whole end piece, cut new fabric and sew it back together. This time I sewed the layers together, but didn't sew the piece onto the corset until I was sure the grommets were in right. I did get a photo of the grommet setter. Which, let me repeat, is a waste of money which no one should buy. As you can see, it looks like a hole punch, with a place to put each half of the grommet.

The problem is that unless your hands are strong enough to crack walnuts, there's no way to exert enough pressure to set the grommet. I had to hold it against the makeshift anvil (dumbbell) with one hand and whack it with a hammer with the other. Very awkward. Note also the cutting board, which I used to make sure the hammering didn't mark the coffee table.

The grommets did go in OK this time, I managed not to put them in backwards or anything, and sewed the piece on. Next up, boning!

My friend Nellorat just posted photos of her pet rat Isabella wearing the "Queen Gloriana" costume I made, for which Isabella won Best Costume at a big rat show over the weekend. It looks really good on her if I do say so myself! It matches her coloring perfectly. The other rat costume gown is, if I recall correctly, soft green and gold. I hope they have a girl rat with tan coloring to wear it.

Haven't posted on the corset in a while, for the reason that I haven't worked on it in a while. With so much work on the house and yard, plus paying work being busier lately, I haven't had the energy for sewing. Besides, I was also kind of demoralized by messing up the grommets and then trying it on and discovering it's a bit too big. But enough time has passed that I want to work on it again. So I thought I'd start by writing up the last work I did, a few weeks ago.

The last thing I did was the grommets and the busk. Which are the fasteners on the back and front, respectively. You might be wondering why it needs fasteners on both sides. Because it's a royal pain in the ass to deal with clothing that requires a long series of laces to get in and out of. As anyone who's ever worn twenty eyelet Dr. Marten's knows. The busk in front allows the laces to be used just for tightening, so you never have to unlace them all the way.

Because the grommets are very visible, it's important that they be placed just right. So the first step was to measure carefully. This was supposed to be done after the boning was put in, but I wanted to try it on and possibly alter it first, so I had to estimate where the bone casing will be. I have a magic disappearing ink pen for this kind of thing. It works like a charm: the only problem I have is that in very humid weather, the ink disappears in a couple of hours! So I had to work very fast before the measurements disappeared.

Once the measurements were marked, time to punch the holes. Scary! The grommet setter came with this tool, whose name I don't know. It's basically a metal stick with a sharp hollow circle on one end. You bang it with a hammer, and it punches a perfect circle into the fabric, into which you then set the grommet. You're supposed to do this on an anvil, but I don't have an anvil. So I used a 15 pound dumbbell. All the pounding kind of screwed up the smooth edges of the dumbbell, but the part were you grip it is still fine, so I don't think it matters.

I practiced on a piece of scrap canvas until I got the grommets nice and even. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of the grommet setting tool. (How did I miss a photo of that? I have no idea.) It looks sort of like a hole punch, with a place to put each half of the grommet on each side. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in an earlier post, it's a piece of crap. There's no way to squeeze the handles tightly enough to set the grommet. I ended up holding the grommet setter against the anvil (dumbbell) and whacking it with the hammer. Which was very awkward.

They sell much less expensive grommet setters at the fabric store, but those usually aren't really grommet setters, they're eyelet setters. Eyelets only have one piece of metal, which is pushed through the hole in the fabric and then flattened around it. In my experience this makes eyelets not only rough on the inside, very bad on a garmet that will be so tight against the body, but prone to pull out under pressure. Which is very bad on a corset.

Grommets are much better because they have two parts that are flattened around each other. That's stronger and also a better finish, because the rough part (the part that gets bent when you whack it with the hammer) is completed encased in the two halves of the grommet.

Well the grommets went in, and they looked good if I do say so myself. Except for the small matter of my having put half of them in backwards. The fronts are white and the backs are silver, so this goof is really noticeable. I was too bummed to keep sewing at this point, so I finished the bone casings. If you look really closely, they're not exactly the same width; there is some slight variation. But I think they're plenty good enough for the costume. That trick of sliding them under a pin works really well.

Next up was the busk. A busk is sort of a metal hook and eye thing, although they call it "stud and loop" in the instructions. Corset supply shops typically sell busks in a variety of lengths, on which the studs and loops are evenly spaced. But I'm reusing the one I got in the Past Patterns kit, which has the fastener over the belly moved down a bit. I don't know if this is something about Victorian corsets, or something particular to Past Patterns, or what.

The two halves of the busk must line up perfectly in order to fasten it when it's sewn in. This means that accurate measurements are even more important with the busk than with the grommets. And I have to say, the instructions in the Simplicity pattern for this step are absolutely terrible. They have you center each half of the busk on the fabric, mark and sew, without ever measuring the halves against each other. That's a recipe for disaster, especially with so little margin for error.

There's a much easier way: all you have to do is center the loop half of the busk, sew it in, then lay the finished piece down against the other half of the corset so the fabric lines up. Mark with your magic disappearing ink pen inside the loops, then put the studs into those marks. That's it! The busk is guaranteed to line up just right. (Again, I can't believe I didn't take a photo of this. All I can say is that screwing up the grommets threw me off my stride, so I didn't think of photos.)

Once I had the busks and the grommets in, I was able to try the corset on. Which I did, only to discover that it's a bit large. By myself I can tighten it so much that the back is completely closed. It should be small enough that even with someone else pulling the laces, and the wearer hanging from a bedpost like Miss Scarlett, there's still an inch or two gap in the back. I was worried about this beforehand, because I had heard that modern corset patterns are sized to be worn just snug, no tightlacing. I made it one size too small, but I guess I should have gone two sizes or even three.

The other problem with the fit is in the bust, just like the other one I made. (If you think this is too personal, just skip to the next paragraph.) It doesn't fit tightly over the bust at all; it's quite loose, almost like a shelf for the bust to rest on. Since I've had this problem with both corsets I've made, I'm beginning to wonder if this is the way the corsets are supposed to fit. Maybe I shouldn't be expecting a 19th century corset to shove the bust up into that massive cleavage that you get from an 18th century corset (think Dangerous Liaisons). I guess with that loose chemise on, it maybe won't be too obvious if the corset is a bit loose in the bust.

So that's where I am now: needing to remeasure and figure out which seams need to be ripped out and resewn to get a better fit. And also needing to recut and resew the end panel that has the backwards grommets in it. And needing to clean up my sewing area, which is currently stacked up with books I pulled out of the bedroom before redoing the walls. Sigh. I suppose I shouldn't have flat-felled those seams.