I posted about the puckering problem on a couple of forums, and I think the problem is mainly due to my choice of fabrics. For authnticity, I would have needed to use linen, which has a lot more stretch than coutil, and this stretch allow room for the cording. Alternatively, I could have sandwhiched the cord between two layers of coutil, and then had the 'fashion fabric' over the top - apparently for corded corsets a heavy mateial combined with a light material is a biig no-no.
So, I decided to press on with the cording and see what happened. Inserting the gores seems to have eased the problem of the puckering at the bottom of the underarm cording. When I stretch the corset it dissapears completely  - I think I'm going to get away with it! :) The big question now is whether it will fit well enough to put the fabric under enough tension to pull it straight.
I also made the button tabs for the center front. They are a single layer of coutil sandwhiched between two layers of saitn, and I love them already! I've stitched buttonholes but don't plan on cutting them, instead iI will stitch the buttons on through both the tab and the corset, but I wanted to have the buttonholes there to peak out under the buttons. I don't have suitable buttons yet, the ones on the original are fabric covered and very flat, possibly just a metal ring with fabric stretched over? I will have to experiment to find the right technique.
The cording, by the way, is starting to drive me nuts. mostly because my threading tool is shorter than the longest channels, I will have to do something about this before I tackle the other side! But on the plus side, I'm clearly still in love with this design, because I keep coming back to it when I planned to start work on something else!

Updating as promised! This week, I turned the biro marked muslin into a pattern, tracing the lines onto wrapping paper and measuring to ensure that the spacing was regular where it should be. I also mad a guide piece for the front section, so that i could pin it in place and stitch along the folded/cut edges where needed.
I got one front piece corded, the longer peices were a bit of a struggle! Where all else failed, I poked holes in the coutil and pulled the cord to the outside, then started again through the same hole. This worked reasonably well, but you have to be careful not to get and kinks or twists in the cord or it won't go back through.
There seems to be a bit of uneven-ness between the cording and the seams, where the cording has shrunk some sections (I hope - otherwise its because I stitched uneven seams). I'm hoping that once I add the bust and hip gores the tension will be released.

I figure I also better update you on dress progress, actually done last week but it got missed in that huge batch of updates! I started by pinning the fabric to the front of the bodice to figure out the placing of the pleats. I then took the bodice seams apart and sewed it together again with the overlay in place, including  flat pieces at the back.
I added a sleeve, unfortunately I cut the armband way too small so I couldn't actually get it on! I will fix this, and may need to make the armholes a little wider too since it had all that extra fabric gathered in!
Anyway, with the sleeve inI can drape the pattern for the petal like sections which go over the sleeves in the original.

As a foundation for my 2011 Holy grail project (whats that you say? Its 2012 already? well, um.... actually, once I realised I would be getting married in 2011 this became a pretty low priority, so its now a 2011-2012 project) I need an 1830's style corset. This is somewhere between regency and victorian, the corset is full length but is still more about lift and separate and general smoothing rather than cinching in the waist.
The pattern I have is by past patterns http://www.pastpatterns.com/001.html. However, I'm also in love with the 1830s corset shown in Jill Salens book on corsets, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsets-Historic-Techniques-Jill-Salen/dp/1906388016 which has a really cool front fastening with buttons and tabs on alternating sides. The plan is to use the pattern as a base, but following the cording pattern from the book. I may also reposition the side seam, although the hip gores seem to be in different positions in the book and the pattern so I'm not sure how that will work.

I was concerned about how long it was going to take to do the cording if I sewed channels then threaded the cord through, so I attempted to sew channels with the cord in place. My front layer is satin (dull side out) and the back layer is coutil. I used my zipper foot to sew s close to the cord as possible with the cord pressed up agaist the previous line of stitching. Unfortunately this method caused diagonal wrinkles across the cords. I actually quite like this wrinkled effect, but its not uniform enough to be able to use. I also like that I can cut the coutil to shape, attach a larger piece of satin and  then trim the satin to match. The coutil piece doesn't seem to shrink in the process. If anyone has a tip for cording in this way I'd be interested to hear for future projects.
For my second attempt at cording, I sewed the channels and then threaded the cording through -MUCH better :) To stitch the channels, I set the needle position to 4.5 on my bernina and kept the edge of the standard foot level with the previous line of stitchin. My cording is a doubled length of tesco value string, and as a threading tool I'm using a piece of millinary wire with a loop twited in.
I traced the pattern pieces for the gores and marked angles and positions for the cording, following the pattern from the book. Stitching and cording these pieces took much less time than I expected, so I'm feeling pretty good about using this me

At this stage I decided I actually better make a fitting muslin - If I'd carried on and corded the two main pieces and the corset hedn't fit, I'd have been pretty fed up! Fortunately, it fit really well! I forgot to leave a seam allowance at the front so that looks funny, as does the lack of a busk down the front, which I assume will pull the front in between my breats. Anyway, its certainly close enough that I can continue and make any small fitting adjustments with the cording in place.
By the way, I put one of the front hip gores on the wrong side, so then put the other in back to front so that the cording would slope down towards the front as it should.

The final step was to mark on the muslim where the cording should go. I also had several attenpts at drawing a new side seam, still not sure about this one! I will transfer the markings to paper, and then think very carefully about which order to sew the sections in - I'd like to be cording open channels as far as possible, rather than having to poke through the fabric to get to something which is sewn shut across one end.
And thats all for today!