Tag Archives: Watson

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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progress on wardrobe capsule…

10/04/2021 12:04 pm \ 2 Comments \

I’ve made some more things to add to my little make12/capsule wardrobe….

I think I got this rather smallish scrap of  very nice damask upholstery fabric from my friend N when she cleared out her stash… I fell in love with the pretty ocean-blue colour immediately and the scrolling curls in the damask reminded me of seam foam…  I thought there might be enough for a little skirt. And there was… JUST!!  as in, I literally had the smallest quarter handful of scraps leftover after I’d finished with it!

I started out by cutting my skirt block as well I could.  This left me with a micro-mini that would barely cover my knickers in wearing, so I put my university level mathematics to good use, calucating the exact width I could cut the side pieces into in order that they could fit around the entire hemline of the mini evenly and making maximum use of the very limited area.  And I think I did it!  I found that I could have a little bit of extra width on the last pieces to be cut, and I used these at the centre back, where I think it’s nice to have a little bit of extra length anyway.  So there is a very subtle high-low hemline going on at the back too, as well as a slight curving out of the centre-back seam which give the skirt a little “kick” at the back.

With a basically finished skirt, I realised I had a small rectangle leftover that I thought would be big enough for a pocket facing, so I slipped a little pocket in the horizontal skirt seam.

It has the aqua damask at the back of the pocket, for a nice uniform look when you peek into the pocket on the outside, and the remainder of the pocket is made of the cream coloured gingham I used for my recent little top, which I’ve just now realised I haven’t blogged yet  Whoops!  I will get to it!  it’s a prototype for Cassie’s and my newest pattern which we are working really hard on getting out very soon, I hope.  Anyway, the pocket lining is from the scraps from that.

Due to lack of fabric, I finished the hemline and the waistline of the skirt using a bias bound finish… this was cut from an old shirt of Craig’s.  So really, the only thing I had to buy new for this project was the zip!  I hand stitched the bias bound hemline but the waistband I topstitched on my machine.  The pocket is handstitched on the inside to the skirt.  I love both my labels; this green one is Japanese, organised for me by my friend Yoshimi.

pocket in action… and boy do I miss my white wall in the old house!!  I had to borrow this one from Cassie  😀

Next up!

I’ve had this too-big-to-throw away scrap of yellow cotton jersey leftover from when I made last year’s mini-skirt and I thought I’d be able to get a little T-shirt out of it.  However I was too optimistic! and no matter how creatively I arranged it, even a little top was not going to happen. Well, maybe it could, but not without horizontal seams like I did in the skirt and in my opinion, in a jersey this is just not a good look.

Anyway, obviously I turned to my favourite old standby for smallish cuts of jersey fabric and made a set of underwear… I used my old favourite the Watson pattern by cloth habit, and managed to get two pairs of undies for one bra, which is my preferred ratio.

 I did my usual adjustments to the pattern, like fully lining the bra as outlined in more detail in this post here.  Also, I always cut the front of the briefs to be one piece to incorporate the outer crotch, so as to avoid that awkward horizontal seam at the front.  All elastics and bits and pieces were already in my stash, and the little white bows were recycled from an old, also me-made, set from the past.  I always recycle the bits that I can!

These are the second and third things in my make 12/capsule wardrobe that I proposed for myself, using all fabrics/notions from my stash.  I kind still kinda wish I’d had enough of the golden-yellow fabric to make a top, because I really like the idea of a yellow top in this particular capsule, but I suppose I can still make a top at some stage in the future.  Obviously I’m going to wear the underwear a lot, so it’s all good really.  I’m super happy with the little skirt too, it’s exactly the kind of thing I will wear both winter and summer.  I’m pretty happy it has a pocket too!

Details:

Top; from Burda 4/2014/115, details here
Skirt; my own design, old leftover damask from a friend
Shoes; made by me, details here

Underwear; the Watson pattern by cloth habit, leftover yellow jersey

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I’ve been making a whole bunch of stuff…

22/12/2020 8:01 pm \ 13 Comments \

Ok… stuff!   I just have to write this quick blog post or … I dunno, explode or something!  because right now I am the Red Queen, running as fast as I can just to stay in the same place… and if I don’t just get on with a thing right this very minute then will it ever ever get gone on with, at all?!  That is the question?  So, on with the stuff!

So, a while ago I’d written about how the Burda baby onesie pattern I’d been using for Arthur had proved itself to be too wide for the height of it? Like way too wide, fall off the shoulders wide, while the poppers at the crotch were straining to stay shut?  Well, I made a new pattern, and it’s super cute.  Of course it is!  When are tiny weeny baby clothes NOT cute, hmmm?  Exactly!

So above is the first one… yellow striped cotton jersey from Spotlight stores…  At the same time that we got this fabric, we also bought some lengths for bunny rugs for the baby.  When I say “we” by the way, that is NOT the royal we, although I am indeed in the thick of watching the Crown at present and as such am become quite proficient in such conversational niceties…  no, actually Cassie and I went to Spotlight together and selected fabrics for the new baby’s, new nursery.

I had also previously bought some white cotton jersey, to make a maternity frock for Cassie.

She’d sort of semi-designed what she wanted in the dress, a tank dress, with the tank front able to be lifted up for breast-feeding, layered over a sort of boob tube with an elasticated top edge underneath.  The skirt is a quarter circle skirt. It’s a pretty simple design and style, and she loves it!

Side note: I’ve had to look at the messy lower half of this dresser for years.  It took putting the house on the market for me to finally do something about making this a wee bit prettier to the casual observer.  Voila!!  A sweet lace curtain!  Side note to the side note;  we sold the house… very quickly as it turned out.  The beach house also sold very  quickly, like before it even went officially on the market.  My head is spinning!!  I’ll talk more about this later, right now it’s all still a bit overwhelming.

Next!  I bought this shark print cotton jersey from Spotlight… actually, ALL these fabrics are from Spotlight, to be honest!  I bought this fabric months ago, pre covid, always with the intention of making a little Watson bra and briefs set… ta da!  Simple, pretty – well as pretty as a shark can get I guess! – and comfy.  And finally done!

Lastly, I had a small bit of sharky leftovers.  So, obviously…  🙂

This one is a little bit bigger than the yellow one.

So, I think that’s it for now!  I have a few other things in the works, and will definitely/hopefully?! be posting everything before the end of the year.  I’d better pull my socks up, eh?

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cute little love hearts

10/02/2020 9:01 pm \ 9 Comments \

So, I’m full on in the midst of a mad maelstrom of sewing for Cassie and D’s wedding right now, but managed to whip up another little something for myself… and this is the second of my nominated make-twelve fabrics that I want to sew up this year… yay!  Just quietly, I have also made up a third one too but that one is a secret and I’m not going to reveal it just yet, mwahahahaaaaa!

This is made using my fave underwear pattern of course, the Watson pattern by cloth habit… I always love whipping up a few of these! such a quick and enjoyable project and with no attendant guilt trip either, since it’s a basic essential wardrobe item that is incidentally filling a desperate need at the moment too … I really need to make a few more actually!

I bought the pretty heart printed pink cotton jersey in Spotlight during last year some time, washed it immediately and it has been sitting beside my machine wrapped around the elastic and all the bits and bobs for the bra for probably eight or nine months, haha.  I lined the bra with cream coloured poly stretch that I’ve had for yonks; using a method I developed so as to enclose the seams inside, details here.

Normally, I do not stitch the cup and its lining together along that central seam, haven’t found it necessary, but this time I decided to do it.  I used a hand pick-stitch, stitching in the ditch of the seam, and I really like how the stitches form  a series of very subtle spots along the seam.

Here is my updated make-nine twelve graphic for the year so far!

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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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