Tag Archives: Makebra Dl03

green sparkly “stardust” velvet

30/08/2025 3:28 pm \ 6 Comments \

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!

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some pretty leafy underthings

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

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!)

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regarding lingerie and shopping totes

24/05/2022 12:13 pm \ Leave a Comment \

I made some pretty new underwear… I bought this super cute Snugglepot and Cuddlepie cotton jersey from Spotlight at the very end of last year.  Such a beautiful print, yes?  Slice of my childhood, right there,  I just could not resist!

I am in need of padded underwired bras during winter, because I tend to favour merino T-shirts at this time… thus I made another one.  This brings my bra numbers back up to a respectable number so that I don’t have to hunt around looking for enough things to go into a wash every few days!  Honestly, when the kids leave home, that’s something you don’t take into account!

I used my old favourite, MakeBra DL 03 again.  Although I lately bought the Emerald Erin Black Beauty pattern and am aiming to run up a trial run of it sometime soon, when I get the time for that sort of thing again.  Right now, I only have the time for a tried and true.

The two set of matching knickers are once again the cloth habit Watson briefs.  Sorry to be so predictable!

The neon yellow picot elastic was also surprisingly from Spotlight; i say surprising because it’s pretty unusual for them to stock something so…. not-basic.  Ribbon, also from Spotlight.  The pale green strap elastic was from Homecraft Textiles, of course.  I would have LOVED to find neon yellow strap elastic too, but beggars cannot be choosers around these parts!

While I had the yellow raincoat leftovers from Theo’s raincoat (previous post) I also cut out a Claremont shopping tote for myself, thus using up the very last scraps, which felt awesome.  I’ve been needing a new shopping tote for quite a while, since my older one is pretty shabby now.  I did have to piece the bottom bit due to lack of fabric but that’s ok, I double flat-felled all seams for extra strength so I’m confident it will all hold up well.  I also didn’t have enough fabric for the facing, so just finished the edge with some mustard poplin from my stash, and the yellow zip is an inherited oldie from stash.

in situ in Coles, awaiting the grocery haul

mission accomplished… 

Hurray! I’m really ripping through the stash lately!  Feels so good!

obligatory pocket photos…

  

In my #use30 challenge update, the lingerie used 0.5m, and the bag also used about 0.5m… bringing my total up to 24m used, and just 6m to go.  I’m so stoked at that number, it feels truly reachable at last!

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butterflies

10/03/2022 9:41 pm \ 2 Comments \

I made this exceptionally pretty – I think! – new lingerie set…

Cassie bought this beautiful kit for me for Christmas last year; it’s stunningly lovely, with black bits and pieces; and a really lovely minty-coloured tulle embroidered with iridescent pink/blue/violet embroidered butterflies; from Emerald Erin.  I’ve linked to the kit, it is not an affiliate link.

I decided to use my MakeBra pattern DL03 to make a padded, underwired bra, plus the Cloth Habit Watson pattern to make two pairs of matching knickers.  I love my unpadded Watson bras dearly, but leading into winter I need some of the padded ones.  They just look better under the tight merino sweater tees that I like to wear in winter.

The tulle lace is, of course, completely sheer, so I decided to underline it with some cream stretch stuff from my stash; I bought quite a lot of this from Spotlight years ago and it’s proved incredibly useful in my lingerie making.  I’ll need to get some more when it’s gone!

I also used some black stretch cotton jersey also from my stash, for the backs of the knickers.  The fronts of both knickers is the lace, cut on the bias, backed with the cream stretch.  I had enough of the black fold-over elastic to do one knickers waist and legs completely, and the legs of the second pair.  The waistline of the second pair is finished with regular picot elastic.  I wish I’d had enough of the foldover to do both pairs, but c’est la vie!

I wanted to minimise slicing the butterflies in half on the bra cup pieces, so cut around some of the motifs that would have been too obvious in this aspect, and hand stitched them over the seams.  This wasn’t possible with all of them, but just this little bit is an improvement, I think.  You can probably just see it barely in this picture, but I always hand stitch the fabric to the foam cups “in the ditch” to keep everything in place nicely.

The kit is a really beautiful quality, with everything needed to finish my bra except for the aforementioned foam and cream and black stretch.  ANDO ALSO EXCEPT, it contained only half a metre of strap elastic, which is about half the amount I need to make this bra.  I’m not sure how the black beauty bra pattern works… there was quite a lot of foldover elastic for just one bra, so I wonder if that was supposed to be used for the bra straps somehow?  Or the twill tape? which I used for the decorative bows.  Strange… anyway, fortunately I had some black strap elastic already that did the trick. .  I had no choice really; since I’d basically finished the bra by this point.  If decided to buy another kit from this seller I might have to buy the black beauty pattern as well and see how it all works together.

 

Anyway, I’m super happy with this very beautiful set.

I just love the sharp contrast between black and white on the inside of the bra.  I love it so much I might attempt a bra with this kind of look on the outside, someday  🙂

In #use30 chat, I did use some of my stash to finish, probably about half a metre of black and cream stretch all up; so I can legitimately claim this little bit off my #use30 pledge for the year.  Well hey, each little bit counts!

My total for the year so far is up to 15.5m; and I have 14.5m to go, yay!

 

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“autumn tree swirl”: lingerie set

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

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…  🙂

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pretty turquoise lingerie set

28/07/2019 4:36 pm \ 6 Comments \

Oh hai!  So I’m suddenly and frantically trying to blog things I’ve made in a month WITHIN the month.  Something I am lately failing at dismally!

However, not much to say really.  I made a bra and two pairs of matching undies.

Bra pattern is my standby MakeBra pattern 2610, now renamed DL 03; and the two pairs of undies are both my favourite cloth habit Watson briefs.  I used a lovely aqua-turquoise stretch lace from Minerva crafts, and a cream coloured polyester from Spotlight, the latter has been in my stash for yonks – also used for this set, actually.  Pretty pink ribbon and all matching cream elastics from Homecraft Textiles.  Foam for the cups from the MakeBra basic kit I purchased years ago.  Rings and sliders recycled from an old, also made-by-me bra.

I did some slightly different with the cups this time, and instead of piecing the lace to cover the cups, I stretched it over the foam cups that I’d already covered with the cream polyester, pieced in the usual way.  I did this because I didn’t want to break up the pretty design of the lace with obvious seaming.  Always an issue with a pieced bra cup!  When you seee bras in the store they don’t really have this pieced cup thing going on and I wanted to see if I could make it happen with my own homemade bras too.   I had to very slight gather the bottom edge of the lace in order for this to work, but I think it turned out ok.

I didn’t have quite enough of the lace to cut the bra band out in one, single piece, so there is piecing towards the back of the band.  However I think this is subtle enough that it’s not a problem.

Extremely eagle eyed observers might pick up that the hook and eye closure are on the wrong sides here!!  Now this is the reason why I usually haul out an existing bra every single time and check FOR SURE before adding these, because the one time you don’t?!!….  Of course I only discovered this when I went to put the bra on for the first time….. DOH!  I managed to get it on ok at the time, but before wearing it again I unpicked them and swapped them to the correct sides.  My hands are like old dogs, and are not used to learning new bra-wrangling tricks like this anymore!

I made the bra and one pair of knickers to be total lace; but didn’t have enough lace for another entire pair of undies… but well I like to have the undies different from each other anyway.  In fact, I decided I liked the half-lace undies more in the end!  I carefully cut and appliquéd to get them all neat and nice.  After my wedding dress adventures, I now consider myself a lace-applique expert, actually

 

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