This is my version of Elizabeth's effigy corset that I made in 2004-2005. Yes, I took some liberties. I needed to be able to dress myself, but my weight was in flux, so moving the closures to the sides instead of center front and center back accomplished both tasks. It is made out of two layers of coarse woven, yellow linen. A third layer, on the opposite grain, is sandwiched between the layers of the straps only and stitched in place in order to limit the stretch of the straps since they ended up on partial bias. The front and back are each cut as a single piece. The channels are machine stitched and are filled with "artificial reeds" (aka, round weed whacker line). It worked quite brilliantly, no collapsing or softening in the heat (and this was San Luis Obispo faire in July). A little bit of a ski slope in profile but I was a 34DD here, so some extreme change in altitude is to be expected. It is hand bound in straight grain cut strips of fulled blue wool. The lacing eyelets are all hand bound using a button hole stitch to finish.This was actually my first time doing the button hole stitch to finish, all my others were made using a plain whip stitch. Survey says... It makes zero difference in strength of the hole, it's just pretty. Just make sure if you do it that you pull button hole knot to the outside of the eye, not the inside, or it will close up your hole.