"Oh, honey, does my hips look big in these?"

Here are finally a picture of my pocket hoops. I've used three sources for these, marquise.de, Corsets and crinolines and a hand out I got when I was in tailor school. I just compared all three patterns and made something that was in between all of them ;)

The hoops are made of a sturdy cotton fabric with a herringbone weave. I've used it for corset lining before and had some remnants left. The boning channels are made of some unbleached cotton bias tape I had laying around. I used sewer tape for boning, I just put some electrical tape round the tips of it. I went with this because it was cheap and easy to get. (And stronger than plastic boning or cable ties)

I machine sewed all the seams and the channels but cast the seam allowances over and down by hand. I also hemmed the pocket opening and sew that the channels for the string by hand with a running stitch. I used cotton embroidery floss for the pocket slit hems and white linen thread for casting over the seam allowances and for top channels.

The whole thing is tied on with corset lacing made of polyester (it's sturdy and I had it at home and it won't be visible from the outside so I decided to go with it). And spend my money on things that will show instead :)

Next step is to repair my stays and make the bottom petticoat. When that's done I can start on my pet en l'air and calculate exactly how much material I need to buy for the striped petticoat and for the ruschings for the jacket.My plan is that it's easier for me to decide what lenght I want my jacket to have when I see how my skirts will fall over the pocket hoops. I think I will go for a short one, that hit like 10 cm below the edge of the hoop or something.