Hello!
I’ve made a new lingerie set for myself, using the very last remains of this gorgeous autumn tree swirl cotton jersey. It’s pretty special, since it was designed by Cassie; and is actually available in her Spoonflower shop, should you be interested… I’d made a romper for Theo out of the original 1m piece late last year, and this is squeaked out of the leftovers… there is zero left now!
I used my MakeBra pattern, which has been renamed I think since I bought mine… it is now DL 03. At the time I saved myself money by buying a single size, and since then I’ve gradually tweaked the sizing a smidgen here and a smidge there, and finally have the absolutely perfect fit at last. Namely, about 1 cm has been shaved off the “rise” of the cups, each side of the centre seam of each cup, and also the position of the cup cut-outs has been moved about 0.5cm further away from centre front of the band.
The undies are Ye Olde Faithful; the Cloth Habit Watson brief pattern, with my usual mods, outlined here.
I was cutting these from scraps so couldn’t do much creative in the form of pattern-matching, but I did cut out and hand-applique on a couple of extra trees onto a bra cup to continue the visual look of the little trees in the print. It just looked a bit chopped off without them and I couldn’t stand it!
I bought all elastics from Homecraft Textiles as well as the rings and sliders… and the underwires, underwire channelling, hook and eye tape, and the foam I used to construct the cups were all from the original “ivory” colourway MakeBra basic kit that I bought a few years ago.
I have a sorta funny story regarding zig-zagging the foldover elastic… it was extraordinarily difficult and messy this time and I had so much trouble. It wouldn’t feed through the machine, and when I did manage to drag it through as gently as I possibly could it became horribly stretched out. As well the stitches looked all jagged and uneven, and the tension was all over the shop. I painstakingly unpicked way more hideous zig-zagging than is good for anyone’s mental health, and tried so many different settings on my machine… none of which seemed to work. I was near despair and at one point seriously considered actually hand stitching ALL the foldover elastic. You REALLY know you’re desperate when… !!! I actually DID hand stitch it along the top edge of the bra, and it looks really pretty too so I didn’t even re-do that bit when I finally worked out the problem. Oh, what was the problem? I hear you ask? Well, I finally noticed that I was using a denim needle to do the job. I substituted a stretch needle, and whammo; perfect zig-zagging immediately ensued. Who knew, eh? *facepalm*
The fabric I had already of course… and since I originally had 1m from which I’d cut out Theo’s romper, I’m counting this lingerie set took maybe 50cm. Meaning, so far for the year I’ve used 1.5m from stash, and I have 28.5m to go in my little #use30 challenge for this year, yay!
Oh, btw, I’ve given some thought to my “thing” for this year… other than the aforementioned #use30frommystash; which I optimistically to have achieved fairly early on?! I hope! Anyway; I’ve decided to just go with something that extremely open-ended and that’s to simply make 12 things. No other criteria necessary other than to put it plain and simple; I am hoping to make 12 pretty and/or interesting outfits of some sort for myself this year! Pretty achievable, I think!
I’ll be filling up these little dummies as each new outfit transpires… 🙂
hello! first thing made for 2022, hot off the machine!
Also, my Japanese lessons are still going really well… although travel still feels like a far off very distant thing, I’m enjoying it so much I will probably take up Celtic again if I have more time this year, fingers crossed!
I can finally present, in entirety, my #make12, or #use12, capsule wardrobe… yes, that funny little project I’ve been chipping away at all year… hurray! Phoar! I cannot be more thrilled with this funny little collection, right here! And how it all worked out in the end, with just a few minor nudges and fudges here and there.
Actually, I said I’m happy with these, and I am! but truth be told I think my leather was just a shade on the flimsy side? and the ankle strappy bit flops in when I’m not wearing them, whereas the ones I’ve made using leather supplied with the kit – obviously superior! – does not. So I’m thinking of going in retrospectively and applying a lining to the straps to stiffen them up. I think this will be quite easy actually, and I have some very thin pig leather that is supposed to be used to line shoes that I can use for the purpose. I bought this from Skindhuset in Copenhagen during one of our trips there.
I made another romper for Theo recently. It’s the same design as the previous few I’ve made for him, just sized up a bit so he can wear it through into autumn.. Seems only fitting, given the very autumnal themed fabric, don’t you think?
The “fat” cushion is stuffed, elsewhere I used double layered wadding throughout, and was careful that the print faced “up” everywhere possible.
I had just barely enough fabric from my order of 1m to cut it all out, and had to do a little creative piecing on a two corners of the flat cushion to get it out, I don’t think my piecing is too heinous, but in any case it’s going to spend most of its time squished underneath a cute baby bottom.
