waist tape

Patterning a waist belt proved to be difficult. Cutting one piece of fabric to run around the waist and flare with the curve of the body, that is not cut on the bias, is beyond me. At least with the corset patterned as is. If I made changes to my altered pattern I think it's doable, but that can be done with a future corset. For this one I'll just sew in a regular waist tape. I've pinned petersham ribbon in the interior of the corset at the waist line.

The waist tape will be held in place by the sewn bone casings. Here's a view of the basted on casings from the exterior of the corset.

You can see the exact moment I realized I didn't need to baste all the bone casings as securely as they were over the cording at the bust. There it is, at the waist line, on the casing between the third and fourth panels. 

The casings that will go one the first panel between the busk and the seam of the second panel, and on the last panel between the seam and the lacing, will be placed after I sew the busk and lacing strip on. I should probably do them before, but I want to evenly split the difference in space and am afraid a casing will be off to one side if I sew them first. And I made a change on the casing for the fourth panel. On Norah Waugh's pattern it's two pieces of boning in a wide casing. But a 1 inch wide casing left less than 1/4 inch on each side of the next casing and it looked bulky and off balance. I'm going with a single piece of boning and have faith it will do the job.