A Year in the Making, Day 37

The next piece of the striped suit outfit is a waist cincher. I knew I wanted it to be leather, and even had the perfect leather for the job, a rich reddish-brown hide that I've used for a couple other of projects, most spectacularly in a barbarian outfit I made several years ago. I picked as a pattern McCalls' M4861. Thought for a bit about the oddness of using a RenFaire wench-type cincher as a part of a steampunk costume, but as Diana Vick, co-chair of SteamCon (only 16 days away!), is fond of saying, "Steampunk needs historical accuracy like a dirigible needs a goldfish!" so I said what the heck and forged on!

As I was digging through my remnant bins looking for something suitable for a lining, I came across a bit of ivory dupioni, and a little voice in the back of my head piped up, saying "Gee, if you use that, you could make the cincher reversible!" I'm nuts, so I listened.

So last night I managed to get all the pieces cut out for my waist cincher. There are three layers - the ivory dupioni silk, the brown leather, and a reinforcement layer of cotton duck. The silk is sewn onto the duck for durability:



I used the sandwich method for assembling the layers, which gives extra strength at the seams and instant boning casings as well. I've got the layers assembled and the binding (used more of the silk) along the bottom. Tomorrow, I cut the bones, insert them and bind the top, and add the grommets, and I'll be done. Here's views of the two sides:

The leather side (still need to take a damp cloth to it to remove my chalk marksst!)



The silk side



Even though I did work on making something today, I feel like I'm cheating because I didn't finish it. Silly, I know, but here's a new pair of pink opalite earrings so I can still satisfy my inner nag and say I did make a complete project today!