makeBra Archives - Handmade by Carolyn

some pretty leafy underthings

15/03/2023 12:32 pm \ 1 Comment \ Carolyn

I’ve made some pretty new lingerie for myself… how lovely is this sweet leafy lace? Sometime in 2020 I treated myself to a Black Beauty kit from Emerald Erin. I bought the Black Beauty bra pattern too; planning to use it with this kit … however. I ran up a muslin for the pattern first – I know! so unlike me!! – anyway, it just was not working out for me. I’ll give the pattern another go sometime, but in the meantime I wanted my pretty new set so just went with some tried and true patterns. Yes of course I’m taking about the MakeBra DL03 and the cloth habit Watson pattern for two pairs of matching undies. My good ol’ go to’s.

I roped in some foam lining from my original MakeBra basics kit, and some white cotton jersey and white lingerie elastic already in my stash to finish up the bra and to make two pairs of matching undies too…

Some making notes:

The Make Bra pattern is a wonderful pattern, but you do have to cut and piece your pretty lace to make the cup covers; and sometimes this just will not look good. In this case it didn’t; the seams in the tulle stood out too much visually, so I cut out some of the motifs from the lace and arranged and appliquéd them to disguise the more visible seams. I really love how this looks and am super happy with how organic it looks.

My two pairs of matching undies are similar but unidentical. I really like this sort of effect in a lingerie set. I actually have a tiny piece of lace leftover, so might even make up another thing with it sometime.

It’s funny; for the last two of my children’s weddings I have managed to make a new set of underwear to wear on the day, and this third wedding for my third child has turned out to be a continuation of the tradition! I shall really enjoy wearing my new set along with my brand new mother-of-the-groom outfit! It even matches! (hint hint!)

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: cloth habit, lingerie, makeBra, makeBra DL03, watson

“autumn tree swirl”: lingerie set

22/01/2022 6:10 pm \ 1 Comment \ Carolyn

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… 🙂

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: cloth habit, lingerie, make12, makeBra, makeBra DL03, use30, watson

navy blue lingerie set

07/05/2019 8:05 pm \ 4 Comments \ Carolyn

So, items in my wardrobe I am currently very much in want, and need, of replenishing, are those that reside in my smalls drawer…. and with our Family Wedding just around the corner I reeeeeeeally wanted a lovely new set of lingerie for the Big Day! And of course, what better than one to tone in/match my wedding outfit?

So, without giving too much away, because guess what?!! my outfit is not even navy blue!!! NOT EVEN CLOSE!! anyway, this is that set!

I bought half a metre of navy blue stretch stuff and a short length of raspberry ribbon to decorate, all from Fabulous Fabrics; and imagine my delight when I managed to cut, not just my usual one bra plus two pairs of matching undies, but TWO new bras! and the requisite two new pairs of matching undies… thanks to the fabric being super wide. I also bought a very short length of navy blue lace… way too short as it turned out because cutting out the lace for my Watson bra was a headache and a half, no hope of pattern matching, and I barely could eke out a little bit of lace from the leftovers to insert into the two pairs of undies too… in retrospect I shouldn’t even have tried. Because while snipping out the jersey from behind the lace on one pair of otherwise finished and PERFECT undies, I actually cut in the wrong spot and sliced a neat little hole in the side of one. GNNNNNNNNNNNNNN! I almost cried! So I ironed a little patch of iron-on interfacing behind the hole, and it’ll be … fine. Moral of the story, don’t sew while tired, kids…. anyway, I’m not wearing that pair to the wedding!

The two bras, so one is the Watson of course, with the navy lace backed by some of Kelly’s wedding net as the lining… shhh! I “borrowed” a bit from the leftovers! and I really like that I have a little bit of the wedding dress in my outfit too! even if it is very much hidden and NOT obviously from the wedding dress. Otherwise, it is an unremarkable Watson. As usual, I constructed the cups so as to have all the seams neatly hidden away inside the lining, as per this post.

Both pairs of undies are the Watson briefs, with my usual modification so as to eliminate that awful horizontal front seam.

The other bra is my makeBra padded balconette style bra, fairly plain; but I really love this style of bra, it’s so good to have a few lightly padded T-shirt bras like this one for winter, and this is my favourite pattern for that purpose.

I used pretty silver rings and sliders with navy blue underbust elastic and bra straps for both bras (Homecraft Textiles), black lingerie elastic and black findings throughout (Spotlight), foam for the balconette bra from the makeBra basic kit, cream stretch for the linings from my stash, originally Spotlight. I’m so happy with both bras! and ONE set of the undies, at least, ahem…. and in any case I am looking forward VERY much to the day that I get to wear them!

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I’m soooooooooooo excited for the BIG DAY!!!!

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: cloth habit, lingerie, makeBra, makeBra 2610, watson

liberty lingerie

16/06/2017 11:15 am \ 30 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made some new lingerie… arranged here ever so prettily with some sweet little blooms gathered from my garden and scattered just so… doesn’t it look nice?

Patterns; ye olde favourites… MakeBra 2610 for le brassiere, and the two sets of matching knickers are the cloth habit Watson briefs modified so as to remove that awful front crotch seam. I’d bought 1.5m of the bra strap elastic, which turned out to be enough to make the shoulder straps as double straps. I’ve seen this done on a few of the more high end rtw bras around and I likey! so it was good I had enough to have a go at it!

Fabric; I bought this Liberty jersey from the Fabric Store in Melbourne, (NOT an affiliate link, just there for courtesy) during my trip away there with Mum, Cassie and Tiffany in March; such a fun trip with much shopping and chatting in a girly way there together. It is called Scilly Flora, in pink, and I immediately fell in love with its playfully naif flowers in a bright and cheerful kaleidoscope of red/pink/orange/mauve /green. Apparently it’s a reworking of a child’s hand-drawing, which is a really sweet idea.

White cotton jersey for the knicker lining, the cup foam is from my MakeBra basic black kit, still got lots of that left, yay! and I got the electric blue foldover elastic, bra straps and the red underbust elastic from Homecraft Textiles in Vic Park; really, they have the most wonderful and amazing range of elastics EVER!! I’m always blown away a bit every time I go in there. Sometimes I wish I could justify making a new set of undies every week, just so I can utilise all the colours they have there… but lately I’m aiming to only replace things as they wear out now… as in, one thing out, then a new thing in. A little restraint, please. Oh, I also got the black rings and sliders and the black hook and eye thing from there too.

It was a little bit of a pain changing threads a million times while making this set; I switched between blue, red, black and white threads AND bobbin threads MULTIPLE times, like I’m not even kidding I spent more time switching threads in my machine than I spent actually sewing… seriously! But I think it looks really pretty, and I love it. My underwear drawer has never looked so colourful!

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: cloth habit, lingerie, makeBra, makeBra 2610, watson

Jungle-y underdaks

29/01/2017 10:31 am \ 28 Comments \ Carolyn

Can you even see my latest creations…? Not really? Well, that’s because it’s all so perfectly and beautifully camouflaged in the deepest, darkest, greenest depths of ~~my garden~~ I mean… the jungle, of course!!

So it’s January, and I’d begun to notice a few jungle-y things popping up on my IG feed… oh, it’s that time again…? well alrighty then!!! hurrah! Jungle January! the brainchild of Anne of Pretty Grievances I LOVE sewing challenges!

I’m continuing on with my tradition of making a new set of bra plus undies for my thing. The last two years I’ve taken the humble frog as my inspiration, firstly here and secondly here… this time I wanted something different, and by that I meant a creature other than a frog. I had a few different ideas… but nothing jumped out at me… finally I just thought; I’m going to google “jungle” and select the top rating picture as my inspiration, no further argument. I did, it, held my breathe, what creature was I going to have to “interpret”…? and this is what came up…

source, kingofwallpapers.com/jungle

THE JUNGLE ITSELF. OF COURSE!!! #facepalm

Truly magnificent, yes? Nature at its most glorious.

First impression; well, just GREEN. How extravagantly, intensely, and totally green it was. Fabricwise, I was immediately reminded of a length of stretch stuff that Mum had tossed out and that I had immediately squirrelled away, it has a random painterly print on it; predominantly green with some blobs of other colours subtly melting all together; I think it was originally from Fabulous Fabrics. I dug it out, positioned my pattern pieces on it strategically so as to include as much of the greenery bits as possible, emphasise the “jungle-y” parts of it as much as I was able.

There are even a few, almost snake-scale-y bits, ranging from mossy, yellow-y green…

right though to an almost aqua green

…and can you almost imagine here the golden sunlight breaking through the high-up leafy canopy, and maybe a bright scarlet flash of parrot’s wings, or a single jungle bloom…?

Patterns; my old favourite MakeBra bra pattern, and the two pairs of matching briefs are both cloth habit Watson. I used the makeBra instructional video on how to make a foam-lined bra to make mine; it’s a brilliant video, completely foolproof. Some of my materials like the foam and some of the elastics are from the MakeBra basic kits that I bought last year, though the underbust bra elastic is from Homecraft Textiles because the stuff in the MakeBra kit is not such good quality this time, unfortunately. The lingerie elastic on the undies is from Spotlight. I bought up a huge amount of this during a sale one time and am still using it up!

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: cloth habit, jungle january, lingerie, makeBra, makeBra 2610, watson

pretty duds, plain duds

20/09/2016 11:38 am \ 40 Comments \ Carolyn

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!

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: lingerie, makeBra, own design, watson