With the plastic-covered hoop wire, I poked holes in the ends, overlapped them and sewed them with upholstery thread. When the farthingale needs a bath, I take them out and put them back when it's dry. Hopefully that will minimize rusting.

Alyxx,
I don't understand the difference between: "channels like boning" and "circle for a farthingale." How else would you get the boning into a cone-shaped garment than to attach tape on top of the finished garment over all seams?? Confused...

On my farthingale, I used linen-covered steel hoop wire and stitched them together, as mentioned by someone else (sorry...forgot the name!). I didn't want to do that to a client's garment as I want her to do as little as possible to pull out the hoops in order to launder. Hence, the clampy things to hold the hoops together would also cause problems, no?

For my client's farthingale, I ended up using U-shaped tips and shoving them into the channels with a huge overlap. The linen covering the metal wire has enough "grab" to keep them relatively in place against the cotton farthingale. In this way, she should be able to pull the hoops out and shove them back in with ease when she washes it...I hope, I hope, I hope.