So it's day 1 of my waist training - I'm wearing my black underbust corset under a loose dress for a few hours every day. It's an attempt to get some curvature into my life. It's incredible how comfortable it is actually - I'm sitting at my PC with good posture and feel neatly pulled in. All this nonsense about corsets being bad for you and a tool for subjugating women is rubbish - I feel empowered and confident. It's like wearing make up - I don't do it for anyone else - I do it for me. Here's model Victoria Dagger's article on her waist training (first pic is the corset I made for the Oxford Conference of Corsetry 13) - the Lingerie Addict is always a good read, and so inspiring;

http://www.thelingerieaddict.com/2014/01/beginning-waist-training-journey.html

Trimmed down to a closed 20.5" resulting in quite a dramatic hip spring

The beauty of corsetry is that any fabric can be used as long as it is flat-lined to a strength layer such as coutil. With this corset I used a spangly Zara top that didn't fit me that well, though I love the fabric. Two different materials are often difficult to sew together, with one being more stretchy and stretching under the feeder foot to a different degree to the bottom layer. To get this to work I pad-stitched the two together and as I sewed, I would lift up the footer and force the top 'stretched' layer back under the foot slightly. It's a slow process!