Tanga Archives - Handmade by Carolyn

blue and green should never be seen

31/08/2018 7:01 pm \ 8 Comments \ Carolyn

I almost called this new lingerie set “frozen”; which to be honest is more like an accurate description of me, actually, while disrobing for the purposes of trying it on, haha. #comeonsummer But finally, today the last day of winter YAY!!! Around this time is typically a low time of the year for me, when I’m really flagging and running low on zip and zoom, just banking on the promise of warmer weather appearing, any minute now. I know I know; our winters are so mild, what have I got to complain about? Nothing really. And yet…? I do. Sad to say, I do. But I shall stop now. Becaaaaause… *pauses for dramatic effect* I have some new pretties!!!!

It’s a bit embarrassing actually, since this lingerie set has been all cut out, elastics and all the other bits and bobs present and accounted for, and the whole lot merely awaiting the sewing together bit for…. *mumble mumble* months now. Actually I believe I mentioned it the last time I presented a set of underwear, here on ye olde blog. I did a bit of a cleanup of my sewing space (Tim Gunn voice, there) and the pieces of this set got “tidied” away into my laundry cupboard, out of sight and out of mind. SAAAAD!! Anyway, it’s made now.

I’m very happy with this new set… I really love to have matching sets, and it’s even more pleasing if I can make the two sets of undies quite different from each other, and at the same time match each other, and the bra. Tick!!

Patterns:

Bra, or more accurately “bralette” I suppose, since it’s a fripperous little thing with no underwires or anything serious like that; it’s basically my own design, the same design I used to make this neon yellow one here. I draped the lace onto Bessie and cut and pinned and tried on here and there… and ta da!

The two sets of matching undies are made using:

1. the Watson briefs, which I’ve used a million times before. Not even exaggerating there. Oh, ok, maybe a little then 😉 And

2. the Tanga lace panties pattern a free pattern available on Burda style here. I’ve made this pattern up three times before; here, here and here. They look absolutely adorable while you’re wearing them, but the design is just not my favourite… the sides are completely unsupported and so have a tendency to slowly slide down your hips; meaning I’ve never felt 100% secure in them. But they really are soooo cuuuute! so here we go again… this time I downsized from a medium to a small, because it occurred to me, that maybe the medium is simply too big. I cut out a medium first – this lace is not cheap!! – but pinned the small on me, to see; and yep, small fits just fine. Got high hopes for these ones!!!

Oh, and I also did my usual, and very essential, crotch fix as described here.

Materials; Blue lace from Homecraft Textiles, green silk jersey was a hand-me-down scrap from Mum. Bralette is lined with a light peach-coloured swimwear lining fabric from the Fabric Store ( I have quite a lot of this) Elastics and all other findings from Homecraft Textiles. The blue fold-over elastic on the green watson undies was leftover from a previous project, this set. The lace knickers have a green panty liner, because it shows through the lace obviously! whereas the green undies have a white liner, because not enough fabric!

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: cloth habit, lingerie, own design, Tanga, watson

palest grey/green set

12/12/2015 9:04 am \ 23 Comments \ Carolyn

A new lingerie set…
Patterns; bra is the Watson, by cloth habit; the longline version, and the ultra-cute knickers; which appear superficially like ginormous granny-knickers on the flat but seriously, they’re adorable on! are Tanga, a free pattern downloadable from Burda.
Fabrics; I’ve wanted an all-lace set and bought this lovely green lace aaaaaages ago, gathered all the bits and bobs and cut out the pieces; and then we were going away, I shoved the whole shebang in a bag and forgot about it. Doh! Imagine my delight when recently I found it again… woot! I got cracking and finished it off.
Palest of the pale, grey/green lace, white shoulder strap elastic, rings and sliders; Homecraft Textiles. Picot elastic, beige jersey lining; Fabulous Fabrics. Satin ribbon; scraps found in stash, as old as the hills.

Thoughts; so this is my second Watson bra, the first longline … I LOVE the look of it, well duh, LAAAACE!!! so that’s a plus. A surprise downside is the much wider hook and eye closure is SO MUCH HARDER for me to do up and undo. I didn’t expect that! but probably should have… the thing is; I’ve only ever used a two hook closure up until now, meaning that it’s second nature to me and my hands automatically operate the 2-hooks easily and breezily. A 3-hook is like a whole new brain pattern which my hands have never learned and I’m fumbling away, almost like I’ve never worn a bra before in my life… well, you know what they say about old dogs and new tricks. I’m tempted to think that for a soft, longline style like this I might even prefer my funny, basic little pull-on camisole bralette, simple and easy, save myself the trouble and expense of the hook and eye closure and the style still works perfectly fine for my likes and meagre needs.
I’m still going to wear this new set to bits obviously! just an observation.

previous Watson bra

Also, the back elastics; with the Watson you’re supposed to commence sewing them horizontally along the back from the centre back and they continue on, curving up and over the shoulders to become the shoulder straps, as pictured above. Now I don’t know if anyone else has come up with this problem too; but when I’m wearing it, the elastic does not sit flat against your body, but instead “folds” around the corner and so forms a little lumpy bump as it does so. These bumps can just be seen in the above picture, at the sharpest point of the curve where it starts being a strap. It’s a small thing but a little annoying nonetheless. SO, for this version I cut and sewed the back elastic and shoulder strap elastic on as two separate pieces. Not quite as smart looking, but the bump problem is solved so I’m not stressing over it.

The last time I made Tanga undies I discovered what a bad bad bad idea it was to situate a longitudinal seam in the crotch area … worst design concept, evah! anyway, I wrote about how I fixed that first pair by cutting out a new, seamless crotch using the liner piece. SO MUCH BETTER, and I did the same for this pair too. I cut two lengths of 5mm elastic to be 10% shorter than the side edges and zig-zagged it along the edges, between the lace and beige jersey liner. I know from experience that this is about 1000000 times more comfortable than to do it like the pattern tells you.

I used beige jersey to line the bra cups and knickers liner as well as to partially line inside the front of the knickers. This was cut using my rotary cutter to achieve sharp and clean-cut edges, and is simply zig-zagged down inside the lace. This stuff is a very good match to my skin colour so it was such a great find! Note to self; remember to keep checking Fabulous Fabrics to see if they get any more in stock…
Having a lining also helps to hide the seams, because I treated it like an underlining; the lace/linings seams are inside the garments and not between the layers. I LOVE having the neatest insides possible but sometimes you just have to sacrifice the insides for the outsides, haha.
I know, weird, right? Who even does that?!!

felled seams inside (L) undies and (R) bra cups

I faux-felled all the seams on the inside, by stitching them down lightly and trimming the raw edges close to the stitching. This is not as neat overall than if they were sandwiched between the layers but looks much better from the right side, with no seam allowances visible through the holes of the lace.
To stabilise the cup edges, I stitched short lengths of satin ribbon along the jersey edge inside.

btw; that is the stock picture of the Tanga knickers above right. It makes me slightly anxious every time I look at it… however don’t let the non-pattern matching distract you, this is a cute pattern which is free and available to all; and that’s the important thing here!

Now for some housekeeping… dk’s wife, could you please email me regarding the hedgehog pattern? thanks. 🙂
Also, I’ve received lots of emails from kind readers letting me know that commenting is working only rarely on my blog… I’m so sorry! 🙁 Like everyone, I love comments! so please know, I am working on a site update to fix the problem. It may take a short while though since I’m a complete computer dummy, but I am on it!

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: cloth habit, lingerie, Tanga, watson

A pale set

31/10/2013 8:27 am \ 128 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made another new set of lingerie… fairly plain and simple and prosaic but that’s ok since plain, simple and prosaic are my middle names. Three more of my middle names, that is. I have lots of de facto middle names, deployed in this blog selectively and when it suits my purposes to describe the various facets of my personality and how it applies to my wardrobe.
*eye roll at self-craziness*
The bra has no foam insert, thus the sad, limp, popped-balloon kind of a look it has in its picture above… It does have an extra, underlining layer of cotton jersey in the lower bra cup which gives it a nice thickness. But no padding = no visual appeal, I do admit that. Droopy and deflated 🙁 It looks heaps better on an actual body.

The fabrics have all been in my stash for yonks; an ivory coloured cotton jersey (Spotlight) that I’ve also used for all my white Tshirts and a white stretch lace (Fabulous Fabrics). Also, white lingerie elastic and decorative mini-bows made using creamy-peach coloured ribbon. Unlike my previous lingerie set which was all yellow-y, the presence of pure white here enabled me to use the bright white rings and sliders on the straps of the bra. It’s a pain that Spotlight has such limited colour range; maybe I should get global and go internet-notion-shopping for other colours. Maybe…
I made the straps using this very pro-looking ivory lingerie strap elastic. I spotted it in Homecraft Textiles, and bought some to try it out.

yo, looks like a REAL bra!!

Pros; it looks real clean and neat, and gives the bra more of a professional RTW look, plus it is very strong and sturdy and feels like it will last for aaaaages, even possibly outlive the bra itself and be re-cycled for future bras too.
Cons; looks definitely “lingerie-y” if it was to peep out under a top, whereas I think a turned-out fabric strap looks like a little camisole and doesn’t scream “BRA!!!” quite so loudly. Plus it’s more expensive to buy notions like this as opposed to making your own straps from the same fabric as your bra. Oh well, I bought enough to make one more bra, sometime down the track.

I bought the white stretch lace to fix up these undies, and there was so little left on the roll at the time I just bought the rest. Fortunately, that happened to be just enough for the bra upper cup pieces and another pair of Tanga knickers. These knickers are the easiest thing in the world to make and they look super cute on, but I hated that awful seamed crotch in my first pair and ended up re-constructing the whole crotch… for this second pair I eliminated that crotch seam right from the word go. I cut both the lace crotch and the cotton jersey panty liner using the panty liner pattern piece. I cut two strips of regular elastic 10% shorter than the length of the crotch edge, laid them inside the edges of the panty liner, turned under to encase and pinned to the inside of the crotch piece and then zigzagged all layers together, stretching the elastic to fit. This makes for a very comfy pair of knickers, with no.. er, wedgy issue 🙂

don’t worry, these are as yet pristine and unworn

The other pair of matching knickers is the bikini bottoms of McCalls 2772, in the same ivory cotton jersey as the bra. I really like my lingerie sets to co-ordinate together in some way, and it tickles me even more when the two pairs of undies in a set are different from each other but both still recognisably match the bra, somehow. The mix of cream, white and ivory in this set is very peaceful and calm, and very pleasing to my eye. And I expect it will be nicely unobtrusive under my pale summer wardrobe.

Details:
Bra; KwikSew 3300, cotton jersey and stretch lace, my review of this pattern here
Lace knickers; Tanga knickers, a free downloadable pattern here, modified to have no crotch seam
Jersey knickers; the bikini bottoms of McCalls 2772 with lingerie elastic attached as for knickers.

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Kwik Sew 3300, lingerie, McCalls 2772, Tanga

Seafoam and sand set

04/11/2012 11:00 pm \ 37 Comments \ Carolyn

Remember my self-drafted bra? Well this was bound to happen. Once I had started producing some bras with nice, properly finished interiors; the days of that far-from-perfect bra were numbered. When I learnt how things were supposed to be done, thanks to KwikSew 3300; those cobbled-together insides became painful to my eyes…
So, ta da! I’ve made a new(ish) set.
Y’know what? I absolutely LOVE the fact that the two undies both match the bra, but are not identical to each other! You can tell that they all go together, like one happy family; but each has its own personality. Like; they are sisters, but not twins.
Will definitely do this again 🙂
I took apart the old bra, and re-used as much of the lace as I could, as well as the half-sized padded bra cups and the hook and eye closure. I bought new underwires since the previous ones were too short for this pattern.
For the supplementary fabric I used some lovely soft sand-coloured bamboo jersey leftover from my scrumpled leggings, and had just enough to cut out another pair of undies, using McCalls 2772. I added little scraps of the lace in at the sides of the new knickers before sewing on the elastic; to tie them in with the rest of the set.

Both the fabrics are originally from Fabulous Fabrics.

Y’all know how I like complete and matching sets in my lingerie drawer …. hey, we all have our quirks right? Mine is to have matching lingerie sets; and the two matching knickers per bra combo is pretty much mandatory to my continued sense of balance and order in the world. I’m quite particular in that way 🙂
Now this set matches my criteria.
And it is finished nicely.
I am at peace.

the nitty gritty…
For the first time I made view A of KwikSew 3300 (my review of this pattern here), with the lace upper cup and a stretch knit lower cup, and once again altered the pattern slightly to allow me to sandwich the padded half-cups inside the lower cup pieces. I used a bit of skinny ribbon for the stabiliser on the lace upper cup. It has no give, and the piece doesn’t fit the top of the bra exactly; so I found it necessary to first baste this, easing the lace to fit, then to stitch over my basting stitches.
The underwire casing was made from ice-blue shot cotton, leftover from this top.

The jersey lining of the lower cup “looks” funny; a bit bobbly and boinging out like a trampoline over the concave inside of the moulded cup, but obviously the soft stretch fabric moulds to your body when you are wearing it. I can’t think of any way to force it to follow the curve; short of gluing it or quilting it down to the cup. And there’s no way I’m going to go to those lengths when it actually fits and feels fine when it’s on!

Now for the Tanga lace panties; although they look virtually identical to how they did previously…well, I hope they do!… these too have been taken apart and altered…
Why?
This is kinda hard for me, since I absolutely hate to bag a pattern, particularly an independent little pattern from someone kind enough to put a free downloadable pattern up on the internet, from the goodness of their heart, for everybody to enjoy. Such a generous gesture does not deserve a bagging. But the pattern, as it was, did not totally work for me…. why? because the crotch has a front-to-back central seam, combined with NO elasticated leghole edges to help keep the crotch edges… er, out, and apart from each other. It doesn’t take much imagination to extrapolate; and see that that makes for an enormously uncomfortable pair of knickers, that necessitates one having to find plenty of inconspicuous moments in one’s day to hoink that wretched crotch seam out from where it has no business being. The liner is one-piece, but is too flimsy to make a heck of a lot of difference, unfortunately.
Moral of the story; beware of knickers with a central crotch seam.
So I removed the old crotch and constructed a new one. I used the one-piece liner pattern piece to cut a new knit liner, and also for a new, stretch elastic crotch. I salvaged some more of the decorative stretch lace border from the old bra, cut two pieces to fit the length of the inside lace edge on the crotch which translates to about 1cm short of the outer edge measurement and sewed it along, stretching it along the outer edge to fit, gathering the side edges in a touch.

I didn’t have enough of the original lace to cut a new crotch piece or I would have used it! I had to improvise, using white stretch lace with a over-layer of pale blue poly chiffon; the latter cut a bit bigger all round and sewn on loosely to account for the fact that it does not have stretch in itself. I think it blends in ok. Would you even notice that the fabric was different without this close-up shot?

And y’know what?
Success!!
Using the liner piece to cut a one-piece crotch, and sewing border strips of stretch lace on at the sides to pull them in a bit…. it’s a very tiny adjustment to the ultra-cute lace Tanga knicker pattern, but one that renders them a heck of a lot more comfortable imo. In future versions I will definitely be doing this again! 🙂

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Kwik Sew 3300, lingerie, McCalls 2772, Tanga, Wardrobe Refashion

Smalls

06/07/2012 4:40 am \ 37 Comments \ Carolyn

Hehe, I was thinking of calling this post “My First Bra”, but apart from making it sound like the breathless diary entry of a sweet young teen (ahem) I have actually made two bras before; both years and years (and years) ago, neither of which are around any more for me to post about. But this is the first in my blogging life; so , er, yeah…
I’ve kept to my Wardrobe Refashion pledge of 3? years ago to make all my own clothes, but always exempted myself from underwear; reasoning that I was doing enough in the handmade department already and that I could allow myself a small break here and there. Also, up until a few years ago Bonds were still manufacturing undies in Australia, and I was OK with supporting a local business by buying them. But then they went to the dark side, and started moving all their manufacturing to China. When the last Bonds factory in Australia closed down a few years ago I knew my days as a Bond girl were numbered (wipes a sentimental tear from the old eye) I liked being able to say I was a Bond girl! And now my current smalls collection is… well, lets just say it is an absolute wonder my husband still finds me attractive.
One of my favourite bloggers Novita makes the most exquisite lingerie sets you have ever seen, each more lovely than the last; and her latest Red Lace Set finally tipped me over the edge and I decided that I just had to start making my own too. I rushed out to Fabulous Fabrics for some pretty lace and bra bits…
The knickers pattern is Tanga, a free downloadable pattern from Burdastyle. I had seen this on their site before, but the wonky mis-matched lace scallops in the blue sample pictured with the pattern were so distressing I never took it any further. Novita’s set is beautifully constructed and so perfectly pretty, I woke up to the fact that this is actually a darn cute little pattern after all!
They are super-easy, and take all of about ten minutes to make from go to whoa; even if you do take an extra few seconds to match all the lace motifs… 😉 which of course I did.
Because I am a woman of a certain age and my lace is partially see through; I extended the panty liner piece up to make more of a full lining at the front of the knickers.
My bra pattern is self-drafted, with the help of an old bra. This was, ahem, not super-easy 😀 I looked at a commercial pattern but decided in my usual foolishly gung-ho, can-do manner; how hard could it be? Well, it turns out, it is quite hard to put together a self-drafted, well-fitting bra after all!
My bra looks pretty from the outside, but the insides are far from perfect. It would not bear up to close inspection! Unlike the first two bras I made years ago which were fairly basic, I tried to get all fancy with this one, lining and underlining it, with moulded cups and underwires in their own separate channels. Putting it all together was a jigsaw puzzle! So I have decided to buy a pattern for any future efforts, if anything just for the instructions on the correct and proper assembly!!
One “easy” feature I incorporated: it doesn’t have adjustable straps, because honestly; I feel like that feature is only on RTW bras because they have to fit the different over-the-shoulder lengths of many different sized women. Since the bra has to fit only me, I decided that to have self-lace covered elastic straps would be fine. And it is. I did this for my first two bras too, and they were always perfectly fine. When the elastic does eventually stretch out a bit through wear, I just unpicked the straps at the back, shortened them a tad, and re-sewed them back into position, easy peasy.
The bra also has a purchased hook and eye closure at the back.
So; after struggling through fitting and assembling this thing and half expecting it to turn out hideous; I was pleasantly surprised when I had the final try-on and discovered it to be beautifully easy to wear, soft and yet still supportive, fits perfectly; the most comfortable bra I own. A very unexpected win!
Seriously; I have no idea how that happened.
So I will definitely be getting a proper pattern for next time.