June 29, 2009

finishing the cane boning


Inserting the cane boning was a bit more difficult than anticipated. But it's all in.


The channels were so tight the bones had to be slimmed down so they could slide in. Why the cane slipped in when I did the tests but not on the real corset is beyond me. I cut a millimeter off each side of each bone with Henckels kitchen shears. 


The finished pieces measure 6-7 mm across. The bottom reed is before trimming, the top after.


Still, it was slow going. Aside from being snug, the gessoed cane did not slide easily against the coutil casings. And there were a spots where the folded under seam allowance of the casing would catch under the cane and ride up over it. Brother. I bent two pieces of cane while pushing them in, fortunately I prepared extra pieces for just such a situation. I can not imagine how difficult it would have been if I had tried working with damp, soaked cane. No matter. The rounded cane fills out the fills out the casing nicely and is very light. Next steps, press, finish bottom edge, and lace it up.

4 comments:

  1. I can not believe how beautiful your corset is!!!!
    truly impressive!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Being able to trim the sides is a major plus point to using cane though, eh? I had never even thought of that previously, as I've never used cane before.

    I'm loving this corset though, I really admire how exacting and careful your work it :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you! Trimming the cane down worked really well. And it was made easy because the flat side of the cane has vertical lines running the length so it was possible to cut a straight edge without marking a line. Neat!

    ReplyDelete