Corset Finished and New Commissions

Well, the pair of bodies is finally almost finished. I need to reinforce the lace holes and add shoulder ties, and then it's ready to wear. It was a serious project but I'm glad to be done with it and looking forward to wearing it. I'll snap a finished picture of it here soon. I put all the boning in and got it on for a test fit, safety pinning the straps down. I decided after I had it on and looked at it some that I had originally cut my boning a little too long, I thought they might be a bit too close to the seam edge after finishing so I trimmed them back. After taking about a 1/4in off each boning strip, it was time to sew the entire thing shut. I used a backstitch with buttonhole thread to sew the edges together. Below you can see the backstitching around the edge, and then I've tacked on the bias tape to one side of it.

After the entire thing was sewn around on one side with bias tape, I was ready to flip it over and start finishing the outside. This piece was attached by whipstitching it on the inside first. Next time I'll open the bias tape all the way and straight stitch it on the outside so that the stitches are hidden in the fold. Learning experience ;-)

There's the entire thing with the outside stitched down. Below you can see what is the outside, with much smaller and a little neater stitching as that side is visible.

I'm glad to be done with this project, or at least mostly done. There's probably 30 hours or so of sewing into it while sitting on the couch, driving in the car or on my breaks at work.

Next up is more work on the over gown, which I'm dying to get finished. I've currently got two commissions which I'm looking forward to working on, although one of them is taking precedence over my gown at the moment. The first project is one that I can take a little more time with, it will be a Norse style banner with an appliqued raven. The second is a reproduction of a Zulu coat for Dragoncon this year. It's very blatantly based off a British Redcoat, but with a bit more embellishments. 

SO. Wish me luck ;-)

~E