I’m getting down to the wire for my section of Steampunk Projects from the Gaslamp Garage, and spent today speeding through making the corset to illustrate it.  It’s more than half-way done, and I now completely understand why most professional corset makers use some version of the welt-seam method to create their corsets.  It look me 1/4 the time it normally would to get this far because instead of sewing each layer separately and then joining them together, I assembled almost the entire corset in one go.  The only thing I forgot was the waist tape, so I’ll make another using this method a little later to illustrate including waist tape.

As you can see, it is entirely together, but there’s still a lot of detail work to do.  I need to stitch the boning in place, edge it, grommet it, make the backing bone for the busk, and make the lacing panel.

Just a few days ago, Steam Ingenious posted a brief corset-making tutorial featuring a variation of the method I used to construct the corset above, plus she remembered to include waist tape.  ;)

In other upcoming projects, I have heard back from one of my customers, so in March I will begin work on the final version of the Victorian corset with almost full boning, external bone casing, and lots of flossing.  I’ll be posting detailed descriptions as I work on that corset.

In March I’m also planning to make an unfinished corset core for a felting artist in Belgium.  She’s planning to make a cover of solid shaped felt to go over it, and should be sending me some photos along the way to share with you folks.