Last weekend I tested out a couple of the glue recipes I had found. Trial number one from http://www.toddlerhaven.ca/crafts.htm#GLUE with water, corn syrup, vinegar and cornstarch came out very thick and globby and ultimately not usable for this project..
Trial number two from http://www.pennilessparenting.com/2010/08/homemade-glue.html consisted of water, flour and sugar. This also seemed too thick, but spread in a thin smooth layer. A test run made the silk spotty, so I dampened the silk and applied the glue to the cotton duck and the cotton duck to the silk while it was still damp. This solved the problem of “watermarks”, but required a long dry time. In the end, the silk stuck to the glued duck giving me a non-slippery, stiff piece of fabric to work with. I really liked not fighting with the slip-slidey fabric and will use this method in the future for silky fabrics. I intend on washing the corset one last time and I suspect the glue will wash away and leave only the stitching to hold everything together.