Alterations and Frustrations

The Regency Corset has been advancing at a fast pace. I tried on the lining one last time and decided that the bust gussets needed to be lengthened because the bottoms of the gussets did not reach the bottom of my bust. I ripped out the old gusset panels, drafted a new longer version of the gussets, cut deeper into the corset, and sewed in the new panels. The old gusset is on the right compared with the new longer gusset shown below. I'm pretty proud of this alteration, and the lining fits much better now:So the next step was to repeat the process with the satin coutil, sew the lining and satin coutil together, sew in boning channels, insert the boning, bind the raw edges of the corset, and finally comes the painstaking hand sewing of the lacing eyelets. It took me about three days to accomplish these steps (sorry...I didn't take pictures of this phase...I was excited to finish).

As soon as the last eyelet was finished, I begged Dave to lace me into the corset. The picture is horribly unflattering, but here was the final result (Check out Captain Picard in the background):
It may not be as visible from the front, but from the back it's clear that after all my careful fitting, the darned thing is one size too small. Regency corsets are designed to have a wider gap in the back...but my gap was a few inches beyond the intended gap. You can also tell if you look at the shoulder straps which are cutting into my shoulders because they're too far forward. On a more positive note, at least you can tell that the corset is doing what it was intended to do.
Although my bust line was rather...frightening.
Resewing the seams to try and size the corset up isn't a great option. I had a very small seam allowance to begin with, and the corset really needs to go up an entire size. I have enough satin coutil to sew a second corset, but I'll need more cotton coutil. I'll reuse the busk and boning. I plan to raid my fabric supply and make sure I don't have enough coutil from an old project laying around, and if not I'll have to reorder.