My mother gave me a length of bottle green, sparkly stretch velvet for my birthday last year… and I wanted to make something nice with it before my next birthday rolled around. This is fast approaching so I needed to get cracking!
I decided to use the twist top pattern from the Japanese pattern-making book Pattern Magic by Tomato Nakamichi. Since we moved house five years ago I actually threw away a lot of my old patterns, including all the ones I had painstaking drawn up from first principles using this book. I know, seems like a silly thing to do, but at the time it felt important to clear the decks so I could make a fresh start with a reduced sewing stash, so I can’t really regret it. Anyway I needed to remake the pattern again from scratch, but that wasn’t really such a difficult task in the end.
It’s a great design, one of my favourites; and I’ve enjoyed wearing all my twist tops over the years. I’m wearing it here with my purple Jade mini skirt made earlier this year and blogged here; and my self-designed black tights.
I had a little leftover velvet, just enough to cut a new set of underwear, my usual combination of one bra plus two sets of undies
I used the MakeBra DL 03 pattern, and foam lining and underwires from the kit I bought from them a few years ago. I still had some elastics in my stash, and the only thing I had to buy new was the hook/eye closure, from Spotlight. The undies pattern is of course the Cloth Habit Watson pattern, probably my most used pattern ever since I bought it!
I made one small difference between this bra and my previous ones… I’ve always had the ring/slider adjustors situated at the back of the bra for all my previous ones, for some reasons I can’t even recall now. Eventually I’ve come to realise that whatever those reasons were in the past, ultimately it’s actually extremely INconvenient to have the adjustor on my back. So I switched it around for this new one. I have no idea why I’ve put the straps on in that idiotic way all this time.
I love this beautiful “star-dusted” fabric and it feels so luxurious and beautiful to wear it! Thank you so much to Mum for such a lovely and thoughtful birthday present!
Absolutely gorgeous. Lovely fabric. A xx
Love both the top and the bra/panty set. I think most bra patterns put the strap adjuster in the back, just like in RTW bras. I followed the bra pattern instructions for several years before I wised up to the insanity of the strap adjusters in the back and switched to the front much happier.
You and Carolyn are both geniuses! Maybe I’ll rejig some of my commercial bras …
Love this fabric. You look gorgeous in it and the bra and undies set is inspired. All the best from Basel
Anita
inspiring 🙂
Sam the Aussie
I have the Japanese book too and wanted to make this twist top long time ago but haven’t done it. Your beautiful project gives me inspiration and motivation! Thanks. Love all your projects!