New adventures in corsetry

Last night saw the draft corset stitched together (actually I did a fair amount of it at the pub yesterday lunchtime, by hand, much to the perplexity of my work colleagues!), a pair of temporary lacing strips made (that I will detach and keep for future projects) and the corset tried on. I stuck a grand total of six pieces of boning in there (a cable tie in each lacing strip, two pieces of hoop steel down the front in lieu of a busk, and one piece of each hoop steel down the sides of the front 'V'), and was very pleasantly surprised by the sturdiness of it all:

Immediately obvious problems in the photos are:

• The expected hideous stress wrinkles - even where there was boning, it wasn't closed in at the ends, so the corset slid together along it - and there are only six pieces in there!

• The back gaps much more at the waist than at the top, and the cable ties bend to allow this to happen... I'm not sure how much to correct for this as my waist will 'squish' more when there's more boning, but I think it's safe to say that the corset is too big at the back top.

• The lacing goes too far down - it should stop just below the waist.
• The neckline is just the wrong shape - it shoul basically be straight across. But to where? - Looks like basically the bottom of the armsceye to me...
• I also think the front V should be narrower at the top - extant examples seem to have that seam running over the apex of the (natural) breast or just outside it. That point is quite wide on me, so the apex it is, then.

However, the fit in general was pretty good; the front looks OK, the side seam is pretty vertical and the waist seems to fall at roughly the right point. I'm pleased. :) Onwards!!