Hi,

I haven't had much experience yet of making corsets, but I can't help wanting to make a corset out of book pages. I've seen a tutorial on the internet for plasticising paper so that you can sew it (it says that this produces results similar to oilcloth). diy project: brenna’s book page fabric

I can foresee a few possible problems with this:

1. The corset panels would have to be made up of more than one book page. Would this lead to structural problems? I was wondering if a way of getting around this would be to have two layers of coutil underneath. But I still worry that the tension would be too much for panels that are made of multiple pieces.

2. The way it would behave as 'fabric'. I guess I'm going to have to experiment with this to find out, to see how flexible / strong it is etc.

3. Matching. If I didn't want the writing to be all higgildy piggildy, I would have a nightmare of a time matching. Especially if I wanted, say...a really long poem that was readable all the way around the corset.

I'm punching above my weight here, but whilst I gain experience making other corsets, I'd like to play around with this idea in my head, so that I might be able to do it at some point. Does anyone have any other problems they could see that I didn't list? Or solutions? Or think it's definitely impossible?

So thinking thinking more: I'm guessing the best structure would be:

- fuse and sew paper panels to coutil panels

- sew these panels together to make the corset shape

- sew boning chanels onto the back (rather than go down the seam boning route, for better pattern match?)

- make a lining (because I would like it to look good inside too, with seams and boning hidden...perhaps a floating liner would be easier? Just sewed to the edges of the fashion+coutil fabric?)

I guess I could just get the words printed on cloth and that'd be much easier. But I like the idea of it being a bit different and experimenting

I haven't got much advice, but Simplicity published a pattern that uses magazine clippings: S2966. Simplicity is often pretty basic, but you might find their instructions helpful.

Thankyou I'll have a look at it, and will post back if I ever make it successfully