Liberating the liberty bodice

Remember these? Takes me back a good few years, I found them tight and uncomfortable, and why am I the only person who had ones that did not undo but still had those rubber buttons?My Mother says she thought that they were warm and comfortable and if I remember having to struggle into mine it must have been too small probably one of my sisters castoffs, which is my excuse for buying more clothes than I really need now, it was because I was deprived as a child! My mother does not have access to a computer so I am quite safe. I decided that I wanted my bodice to be rigid as that is how I remember it, I wanted to make it from calico so how to make it stiff I toyed with the idea of gesso on the inside, but used pelmut vilene as a linimg this worked a treat.I downloaded pictures of corsets and bodices from the net and printed them onto calico, these were machined stitched onto the calico bodice I also stitched pieces of text written on tape and just because my new machine can do it I stitched "liberty bodice" all over. the inside of the bodice had photocopied pictures of the revelant parts of the body bonded to it,I made the buttons from air dry clay and they are lovely & rubbery just like the original buttons