The Mad Person-Who-Stitches: Final Fantasy X Lulu's Corset

I do not recommend aerialists to wear corsets.  The old-fashioned, boned, restricted breathing and no bending in the middle sorts are obviously bad news unless you are an unusual person.  The modern padded varieties for steampunk and other genres can be used, but you must make sure they are secured to some sort of undercostume and flexible enough to move with you.  Otherwise the first time you stretch out, you will stretch and the corset will not, and whatever was supposed to be underneath the corset will pop out.  (I profit from watching other people's costume malfunctions here.)

But Lulu wears a corset-ish bodice:
My thought is, since it's supposed to be that form-fitting, why not just make this as a leotard?  All one piece, flexible, breathable, much easier to make than an actual corset.  And that is precisely what I did.       

 Step 1: basic leotard construction.  Anywhere Lulu is showing skin I will be using nude stretch mesh to protect against friction burns and give the costume better stability and structural integrity. 

 Step 2: cut long strips of stretch gray fabric

Step 3: and iron the long strips into double-fold bias tape (since it's stretch you can cut on the grain instead of the bias; I just want all the raw edges tidily enclosed.  Also since it's stretch it won't iron very well, but I got enough of a crease for a guide until everything was stitched down.)

 Step 4: top stitch your long strips to your leotard bodice in your desired pattern, using long stitches.  Remember to leave the side seam allowance free.  Below is my bodice front:

I had some trouble with my layers of slithery stretch fabrics slithering and stretching and especially moving at problematically different speeds under the presser foot.  In future, I will make sure to leave an extra margin of the top fabric beyond the seams, and trim after I finish a seam.  But the mistakes were small, so I'm crossing my fingers and telling myself they won't show from any distance.  You can't see them in this photo, for example.  

Treat the back similarly.  I faked lacing with more gray strips, since lower back lacing is in a very bad place for aerial fabrics: a lot of wraps go there, including sliding wraps, and you emphatically do not want your costume getting caught in your fabrics.

Next time I write about Lulu, you'll get to see everything come together.  I'm really happy with how well this costume is going!