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.
My purple flares have been such favourites ever since they rolled off the sewing machine; an unlikely wardrobe staple. Who would’ve thunk purple jeans would turn out to be such useful things in my life?? Ask the ignorant old-me back then and she probably would have been doubtful… anyhow they have been and I’m rewarding them with a little retrospective.
