Cindy of Cation Designs created a lovely Bellatrix Lestrange costume and detailed her progress on her blog. One of the pieces was a “corset” made from thrifted leather pants, and she’s put together a description of their transformation.

It’s not precisely a tutorial, but it’s a great overview of how to harvest usable fabric from unwanted clothing and turn it into something wonderful. (She mentions several times that she realizes it’s not a “real” corset, but who cares? It looks great, and anyway the Corset Police were disbanded years ago.)

Be sure to dig around the rest of her site as well; she’s got several other costume projects in the works, plus she’s done some nice knockoffs of designer clothes using thrifted items.