Hi everybody,

I'm thinking about the construction of a a self-patterned underbust corset with leather hip panels (I've already done the mock-up and fitted it) and I would love to receive tips from those of you who are used to working with this material.

It is going to be a single layer of white coutil with green dupioni silk as fashion fabric, external silver gray boning channels and hip panels in pink leather.

The leather panels will only have an aesthetical value and will be sewn on the normal panels; but I was wondering if, in order to avoid tearing of the leather, it would be better to stitch all the leather panels together and then sew them over the assembled corset panels, instead of flatlining every single piece over the pattern piece before assembling. I am just worried that the leather could tear if it had to bear the strain (and the narrow stitches) of the main vertical stitching of the corset...

Another problem is that the bias I'm going to use to profile the hip panel will cross the vertical boning and, since I wanted an external boning look for this corset, after much thought I decided to put boning channels on the inside and fake satin bonig channels on the outside (to avoid the bumps of the channels being visible from under the leather and to be able to machine stitch the bias lining the hip panels).
I think this to be the best solution (I am just a tad worried that the bulk on the seams will be too much), but I am open to suggestions if you have any

I include some pics from this website to better show you what I am talking about (since I probably confused the issue a bit...this is not my language, after all )

I think sewing the leather with a longer stitch and then flatlining that whole section to the constructed hip panel (or to the full corset?) is probably best, yes.

I'm not really sure what's going on with the bone casings - do you have a sketch?

Sorry it took me so much to answer: I was very busy last week.

Here it is a very simple sketch of what I am going to do: as you can see I made a detail of the side hip region from the outside and the inside (not considering the lining).

As (I hope) you can see I'm going to put interior boning channels (I need them since there is only one layer of coutil and I decided to put the on the inside because pre-made boning channels covered with satin bias comes out a tad too wide for my taste), and fake satin bias boning on the outside. The leather panels are going to be sewn with one another and then applied over the normal panels: to fix them I thought to sew a continuous line on the bottom of the corset (since there is no boning-crossing problem there), and to sew in between bones on the top of the leather panels. To cover the edge of leather (and the sewing) I am going to hand sew a satin bias strip over the edge of the leather: I thought and thought about this but I guess that hand-sewing is the only way here, since there are inevitably bones to cross...but every suggestion is welcome here!

I don't know if the sewing on bottom and top of the leather hip is going to suffice: I fear that may lead to some wrinkling of the leather... do you think I should double sew on the sides of the leather panels joing too?

In the end this is the worksheet I have devised:

1 Flatline fashion fabric (green dupioni) to coutil
2 Preparing busk and Eyelets panels
3 Sewing panels together
4 Put on internal boning (and waist tape)
5 Put on external (fake) satin boning
6 Sewing leather panels together
7 Sewing the entires leather hip panels on the corset
8 Hand-sew the satin strip over the edge of the hip panels
9 sewing lining and attaching it to the corset
10 sewing bias on top and bottom

Does this make any sense?