Making a Renaissance Corset with Boning

David and Cam are getting married at the Texas Renaissance Festival in just a week. I have spent the last three weeks sewing dresses and vests for the occasion. The most time consuming was a corset with boning. This could have been way easier and taken about half the time if I had understood what I was doing.

Here are some pictures of my corset in progress:

Corset front and back layed together

Cut the pieces to make the two layers of the corset. Sew them so that you have two separate corsets. Line them up and lay them on top of each other.

Paths to hold boning

Sew lines from the top of the corset to the bottom, creating a path for the boning to run through. Cut your boning and round the edges. Slide all the boning pieces into place.

Baste edges to keep boning in place

Baste the top and bottom edges of the corset to keep the boning in place (some types of boning can be sewn right over- this keeps them from shifting).

Corset almost done

This is the corset before the finishings.
At this point, you can simply add the binding and grommets to be done.

To cover the corset with a fancy fabric:

Pieces for top corset layer

Cut the pieces to make another layer. Piece them together. Lay front piece over the corset and baste into place.

Putting grommets on the corset

Now you can add the binding and grommets. The binding is supposed to be hand sewn, but I don't believe in hand-sewing anything other than a button. The grommets are much easier to insert if you have a grommet hole punch. The longer metal tool laying on the wood block is one that I bought for scrapbooking- it saved me LOTS of time on this project.

I will post pictures of us all decked out when I get home from the wedding.

As we say in Guatemala... Nos Vemos!