Sooo….. I’ve been making underwear, and recently have produced two new sets; one is sorta Oo-la-la while the other is more of the Serviceable variety.
Madame Serviceable? you’re up first!
“Pretty” is all very well but we all need some plains in our lives too, right? I still think this set is kinda classy 🙂 Of course I’ve been wearing it a lot! because it’s absolutely awesome under all my winter white sweaters and Tshirts, which I wear such heckkuva lot it’s not even funny. Rest assured though, I took these photos when it was all fresh and brand new, hot off the machine and not yet been worn.
Patterns; MakeBra 2610, which is apparently now renamed DL03; so I’m going to start using that tag instead… and all four pairs of knickers in this post are the Watson briefs.
Materials; light caramel stretchy stuff from Fabulous Fabrics, all other materials are from my MakeBra basic kits. The foldover elastic on the waist of the knickers is a different type from that I used for the legs, because in between the two basic kits I’ve bought through them, they seem to have changed their supplier or something. I didn’t have enough of either elastic to do everything on both pairs of briefs, but I had enough for this arrangement. They’re close enough to identical that I can live with it 😉 The waist elastic is a teeny little bit “shinier” than the leg elastic. The little ribbon bows are rescued from off of an old lingerie set, also me-made. Yep, when I toss out an old lingerie set, I usually salvage the little decorative bows off it, because A) it’s not like they get dirty or worn out or ruined or anything through wear, and B) they’re kinda fiddly to make so it’s worth the few seconds it takes to pick them off to keep for a new set. Waste not want not!
Madame Oo-la-la…
I bought this neon yellow bra kit from Measure Twice Cut Once… and was rather thrilled that I managed to get not just the bra but two pair of knickers from it too;yay!!! Stingey economical cutter; yet another of my middle names…
hehe; I finished the set late at night and then just slung it all over Bessie in a hurry. The next morning it gave me such a laugh to see her “wearing” these pretty frilly nothings all deshabille and “twas a wild-night, eh?” like this!! 😀
The bra design is my own; I just wanted something flimsy and a bit of whimsical frippery. In summer I don’t always want or need to wear the foam-lined “Tshirt” bras that I favour in winter, and can just happily live in the more lacey, pretty and fun designs. Just one more reason to love summer!!! Anyway, I just draped the lace directly on Bessie and ad-libbed it, and I couldn’t be happier with the result! I think it turned out really pretty and almost more like a sweet little camisole than a bra. Don’t worry, it’s definitely going to be worn as a bra, though! even though it’s lined with beige power net it’s still quite see-through.
It’s not a super supportive thing, but realistically I have no need for a super supportive bra anyway. I still think it’s pretty stable though; I stitched the clear elastic that came with the kit along each side of the cups; so they won’t stretch out, and stitched a little strip of bias-cut white linen in with the side seams. I trimmed the linen strip right down before encasing it within the side seam, so it doesn’t show…. and this stabilised the side seams and makes them nice and strong, and they won’t stretch out either.
Inner workings: 1) hand flat-felled seams within the cups and clear elastic stabilising; and 2) linen bias-strip to stabilise the side seams(above) is then sewn to be enclosed inside the layers (below)
There was enough of some neon yellow bra elastic to do one pair of knickers around the waist, the other has a strip of the leftover neon yellow lace at the top. After that, I had to resort to things from my stash; obviously I didn’t have any matching lingerie elastic for the legs and had to resort to white. I don’t hate the white, but don’t love it either… I kinda wish I had made some attempt to get hold of matching lingerie elastic but I’m an impatient person and really wanted to just get them made and done!
‘s kinda crazy and huge-skirted and possibly a bit over the top, but you know what? it’s also extremely comfortable and cosy, and so swirly and swishy. The instant I finished it and put it on I immediately felt simultaneously relaxed, like I had put on a warm comfy dressing gown or something; but also a bit chic as well. The big feminine skirt with a nipped-in waist does that, but I really like how the volume below is balanced out by the mannish style shirt top with cargo pockets and flaps, and a notched collar.
#awkward!! Yes, well; obviously most of us don’t actually twirl very often. Twirling is something of a fashion blogger contrivance… although if I do want to get in a bit of highland flinging I am all set. 😉
make another one!! Doh!! Clearly there’s something terribly wrong with me… #madvogue1247addict
aaaaaand, my week of exclusively wearing Vogue 1247 skirts, in a nutshell…!
Firstly, two sage green/pale coffee, checked tweed skirts. I inherited this beautiful quality piece of wool tweed from my grandmother’s stash after she passed away. Although I earmarked it straight away as two skirts for Cassie and myself I just hadn’t got around to it and have sat on it all this time. It was one of those fabrics I couldn’t bring myself to cut into… you know, inherited from Granny, plus exceptionally good quality, equals inevitable thoughts of sewing tragedy followed by eternal self-damnation…. but I’m making myself get over that nonsense nowadays. Make it! Enjoy it! Live dangerously! So, finally… it helps too that I think Cassie has now grown into fabric of this calibre 😉 not that she didn’t deserve high quality fabrics before, but you know what I mean! it’s very much a grown-up fabric and makes a very smart little work skirt for her now that she has a serious and professional career. The fabric really is beautiful stuff… fine and evenly woven, and there are flecks of all sorts of colours in with the sage green/coffee check… blue, red and gold, caramel brown, forest green, and a hint of purple and black. It has no identifier on it but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was a fully English tweed. My grandmother was very much into that sort of thing 🙂
sie moved out of home she left this fabric behind and I almost started to factor it into my own plans mwahahahahaha… but of course she hadn’t forgotten it, o no! The reason she had deviously left it behind was so that I could make something for her with it! HA! She chose 
Details:
what’s with the ballet pose? I have no idea. Anyway… I have a 
I’ve kept the selvedge from off the fabric, and have sewn these inside one of the pockets! just because I love information like this… namely: this design is by prominent Finnish designer Maija Isola, and was created in 1964! out by a year but definitely still of my era, haha. “Pieni unikko” translates literally to “little poppy” I’m not sure what KI 2009 means yet, but I’m investigating…. Also, how cool is it that the laundering info is printed on the selvedge?! so classy and very considerate really, it’s been along long time since I’ve seen such consideration in a fabric. That information’s the kind of thing I usually forget the very minute I swan out of the shop with my new fabric tucked under my wing.
The loose front pieces also allows you to have these big loose comfortable pockets that you can shove your hands in, while still maintaing quite a slimline dress overall. As a result, the pattern uses very little fabric. I managed to squeeze my pattern pieces out of 1.5m, which is not too bad, not too bad at all, I think *preens oneself on an exceptionally economic layout* I had the merest of scraps left after cutting out my pieces, scraps, I tell you! The pattern has you line the dress, and after a bit of um-ing and aah-ing, I decided to not. Reason? summers here are very hot and I think the breeziness of this lovely cotton fabric is going to be perfect just as it is.
Press the pocket lining out, then turn it under the front piece and press, forming the 1/4″ (6mm) wide bound edge of the pocket.
from the right side (with some irrelevant (white) basting along the side edge… not really necessary for this method)
I’ve made a new dress using a bunch of my kids’ old jeans that I have 
been saving for this very purpose… and please note; yes, I am wearing 
Materials; obviously, all blue denim jeans. I used three pairs of children’s jeans, one pair of child’s long shorts and one pair of adult jeans. The adult jeans turned out to be necessary when I realised that the full-length panels at the back would look pretty terrible if pieced at the waist; it’s a very much piecemeal kind of a design anyway, and to have that nice long smooth length of fabric at the back is just a nice visual anchor in amongst all that busy patchworking, in my opinion. I decided it would be best to retain it; fortunately I had one pair of Craig’s old jeans in my refashioning bag and could cut the long back pieces from those.
My vision for this dress has always been to have lots of the existing jeans’ details retained in it, like the pockets with their decorative top-stitching, the coin pockets and belt loops and so forth; HOWEVER when it came down to it I retained very little of all that! The design was just so… busy; I ended up removing a lot of the little details I was going to put in. There’s still plenty of the jeans bits and pieces left in, I reckon just the right amount to keep that definite “jeans flavour” to it. There are a few original topstitched seams here and there, and the portion of a pocket left on the bodice. I also added tonnes of new topstitching in terracotta upholstery thread, in fact every seam is topstitched down in some cases doubly so.
Something I’ve managed to forget to blog about each time I’ve written about this dress… like all Vogue patterns, for a fitted design it’s a little blouse-y in the boob-al region for my figure; however the princess seamed bodice makes this a very easy fix. I simply pin and stitch to shave a bit off the inner curve of the central bodice piece (above), and this solves the problem for me. A very very easy small bust adjustment, and one I usually end up using for pretty much every fitted Vogue bodice with princess-seaming. I don’t have the same issues with Burda, but always with Vogue. I guess their “blocks” are a little different.
One pair of jeans, the very pale blue pair, was practically threadbare in places, but I still really wanted to have that pale blue as part of the lovely indigo-y mix… these pieces I reinforced with lightweight iron-on interfacing to the back to stabilise and strengthen these areas (below). Don’t want my new dress ripping in its first wear now, do I?!
Hello! just a few quick items for today… I’ve actually been sewing a few things for other people! Scary stuff, huh. I mean, it’s one thing that I can see all my own flaws in things I make for myself, and on a daily basis! but that’s kinda the rough with the smooth, you accept that because it’s all your own doing, all your own fault and you can tell yourself you’re “learning” and going to do better next time haha…. but to subject another person to those flaws … well that’s really exposing yourself. ok, you know what I mean…
Sure, they’re all near identical, but still. What’s not to love about that.
This is the first time I’ve put an exposed zip in a skirt with lining, and wasn’t totally sure how to do it; I put the zip in similarly to how you’d do a welt pocket, and then hand-stitched the lining to the zip tape on the inside. I cut the bottom edge of the pleather clean and straight with my rotary cutter and left it unhemmed; and hemmed the paisley portions in a deep 4cm hem by hand. The skirt is fully lined with raspberry polyacetate, itself a leftover from 
Item number two; a hoodie for my son’s girlfriend. I had made 
