I live in a resort area where the libraries haven't had new books on sewing garments since the early 80's. I find books occasionally in thrift stores. I've been the only person in my family who has a job for several years, and am working to build self employment so that if or when my job disappears, I have a fledgling business to fall back on.

Hadn't thought of zip ties in terms of holding heat in an Elizabethan corset. That's what mine has, and I've been wearing it for seven years. The corset is 100% cotton and linen fabrics, most of them re-purposed, and it does get sweaty, so I (gasp) throw it in the washer. Haven't had the issue of the zip ties cracking at the waist or at all. This corset is perhaps heavily boned enuogh to prevent that type of bending - or I'm able to be a little more careful? When I'm wearing it, it's knees and hips that do the bending, not waist. The zip ties do eventually poke through the top seam, so I reinforced that seam. I wear a D cup, so I added a little support inside the corset, based on pistures of historic corsets. I know that historically, less affluent women used things like reeds as stiffening in corsets. I've experimented with all sorts of things, because I simply can't afford steel boning. The heavy duty electrical ties from the lumber yard work. I've used the wimpy little ones to stiffen a hat, but as corset materials, they're no better than that plastic stuff sold as boning in fabric stores. I have a Victorian riding corset (early experiment) made of denim cut from the good parts of worn out jeans, "boned" with rope clothesline. It works quite well to eliminate soreness from driving or riding around mountain roads in vintage pickups with extremely stiff suspension. Purism is all well and good, but it can come off as snobby and exclusionary. It's not just those of us who sew. My dad is a sculptor who spent years being told that his work wasn't art because it wasn't painting or at least cast metals. There are times and places for both purism and affordable function.

For a cage crinoline, try Ageless Patterns website or Farthingales website. If all you're after is a temporary cage, you might also try a "shortcut" I read about on a Renaissance costuming website and use hula hoops instead of more expensive real wires. Might even be able to construct a cage using duct tape and hula hoops.