Boning Channels

Adding boning channels

So sew already.

Busk alternative

I'm not a huge fan of the standard "split busk" which allows you to open your corset down the middle; I prefer the more "Elizabethan" look of a flat front and high breasts, so I needed to add stiffening down the front of the corset to replace the busk.  This was achieved with 4 1cm channels sewn down the front of the inner layer of the corset, created by with some medium weight interfacing, doubled over for strength.

Really, I should have used coutil for this, but I'd already bought the interfacing and it's 1/3 the price.  I may come to regret this later, but as the outer layer is also coutil I'm hoping that nothing will end up poking through.

Boning channels

Then I sat down and thought about where the rest of the boning channels would go.  I'd planned to have single bones sewn in one side of the seams on the inside, with a few visible channels sewn through the two layers for extra curves around the bust.  But, but, the outer layer looked so crisp with no top-stitching and no boning channels, and bugger-it, I decided to hide all the boning channels in the back layer*.

This entailed me spending 2 Castle episodes unpicking the extra lines down the seams that didn't matter when they were pressed flat, but now mattered if they were going to be pressed open. I also had to sew over everything again with a lock stitch** to make sure everything would stay together; I was planning to top stitch previously, so it hadn't been necessary to unpick the extra.

Then I've cut strips of the interfacing, doubled, then sewn them down over the flattened seams to create 2 boning channels side-by-side. I'll slip the bones in between the fabric and the interfacing, so there should be 2 layers of coutil between me and the bones and 2 layers of coutil and 2 layers of interfacing between the bones and the outside.

Waist tape

The last step was to insert the waist tape. This is a strip of grossgrain ribbon, which has zero stretch, that is sewn along the waist line to reinforce the location with the most stretch. This will then be sandwiched between the two layers.  I've sewn my tape on top of the bones, re-catching where the boning channels are sewn. I'm not sure of the benefits of having over or under the bones.

References

Planning out boning channels from Foundations Revealed.

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* Because I am an idiot.
** Sewing the same seam twice, using a different stitch length each time.

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