2009 edit:

This short bustle didn't hold up very well under my skirts. At the time, it was one of the few commercial bustle patterns available. I've since made the Laughing Moon version.

Mantua-Maker's 1880s Bustle. In cotton duck, and plastic-coated hoop wire from Hedgehog Handiworks.

I ended up adding three extra vertical channels: at center back and both sides. This prevents the bustle from compressing under heavy overskirts. It gives me a slightly better late-1880s silouette. These pictures are before the extra steels were added.

I picked the 1887 pattern, the shorter bustle, in the hopes that sitting down in all of this would be possible. And it was (for the most part).