Lingerie: A cloned bra for my mother

I have been wanting to make a custom fit bra for my mother for ages. I don't get to see her that often though, and when either she is visiting me, or I'm visiting her, by the time I think of it, there isn't enough time left to get it done.

Me Made May 2016 Roundup

Me Made May 2016 is an annual institution amongst home sewists, with Zoe of So Zo What Do You Know at the helm. This was my second year participating, but my pledge was the same as last year, to wear at least two me made items each day for the month of May.

Each day I wore a me made bra, and sometimes me made undies as well. That left a minimum of one me made item to wear each day. Links to all me-mades except underwear are in the round up below.

Lingerie: Sky blue and white lace bra and undies

In closing this year's Stashbusting Sewalong lingerie month, here is my last lingerie make of the month, a new bra and undies set. After finishing my last lot of underwear, I was really keen to have a matching bra out of the same fabric, and starting plotting straight away how I would achieve that.

Lingerie: white silk half slips and lace top

One of the things on my to-sew list, is a wrap drape top that I'm planning on making in a semi-sheer fabric that my husband bought in Vietnam a few years ago. I haven't used much of the fabric that he bought for me, it feels too special to use for just anything. Another issue, is the see through factor. It's not the sort of thing that I really want to line. That would make it bulkier, and hotter to wear in summer, which would probably mean that anything I made from these wouldn't get much wear.

Lingerie: The Maya Bra

The second new bra that I'm showing you this month is the Maya bra by Ana Filimon.

This bra pattern literally stormed the internet last year (well, if you're part of any lingerie sewing groups on Facebook, or read lots of sewing blogs it certainly felt like it did!) I love the beautiful curved upper cup on the pattern, and thought it would be interesting to see how a pattern not drafted to my measurements would fit.

Dyeing Lingerie components

Are you sewing along with the theme this month for the Stashbusting Sewalong? It's all about lingerie this month. If you want to see what others are sewing, you can join our Facebook Group.

Cream and white Lace Bra, drafted from Foundations Revealed

I can't believe that it's been six months since I last made an underwired bra! Ever since I finished making my last wired bra I have been wanting to try out the pattern drafting instructions from Foundations Revealed. Their basic instructions for drafting a darted bra are free, spread over two articles. They have further tutorials for variations that you can make to this pattern and other styles, available if you sign up to their membership, which involves a monthly fee.

Stashbusting Sewalong - May is Lingerie Month

It's that time of the year again, I get to talk about sewing lingerie all month. I'm your host for the stashbusting sewalong this month, so let's get to it.

Stashbusting 2015: A Year in Review

So, another year has come to an end for the Stashbusting Sewalong.  To recap, my pledge for this year's Sewalong was

"I, Andrea, of Obsessive Creativeness, pledge to end the year with no more fabric in my personal stash than I started with"

So, I was aiming for a breakeven position with my stash. I made myself a little spreadsheet to track incoming and outgoing, and printed out some pages so I could just grab my folder and write everything down as it happened, without needing to wait until I had the computer on.

This year for stashbusting, we had guest hosts for each month, and I hosted May with the theme of lingerie. I tried my hardest to sew at least one item each month that was on theme, but for most months that had school holidays I wasn't always able to do this.

My totals for the year were

Fabric intake ........ 56.2 m
Outgoings ............ 58.49 m

Lingerie: White stretch lace Sierra bra

I have so much work to do for others at the moment that to make something for myself I carved out a bit of me-time this weekend while my daughter was at a birthday party. Despite having two other bra patterns that I want to try out, I decided to have another go at the Sierra bra. Although I can't really wear my last bra, as it is too tight, I wanted to prove that I could make it work. The Sierra is a free bralette pattern by Madalynne. If you're lusting after this bra and haven't downloaded your copy yet, you can get it from here.

Lingerie: Stretch lace Sierra bra

I don't often get to the end of making something, and then think, "Should I really blog this? It didn't really work and I don't want anyone to know." There's nothing wrong with this bra itself, it just doesn't really suit my figure, and it's too tight. More on that later though.

This is the Sierra bralette, a free pattern from Madalynne. You can download your own copy here. I just missed following along with the sewalong, but have caught up now. This is unlike any other bra that I have made before. In many ways.

Lingerie: Blue and White Lace and Satin Bra

I couldn't wait to finish sewing the bra that I started with Sharon on the weekend. It came together quite quickly, and before I knew it, it was finished!

Lingerie: Making Bra Patterns is more fun with a friend!

I met the lovely Sharon from Petite and Sewing through the Stashbusting Sewalong FB group, when I realised through a photo on her blog that she lived close to me. We met in real life for coffee one day, and now chat regularly through email.

One of the things that Sharon has been wanting to try more of is bra making, and if you've been reading my blog at all over the past year and a bit, you would know that I've developed rather an obsession with making bras, and am constantly on the search for the perfect fit.

I swear my desk my clear at the start of the day!

Lingerie: Top 10 things to avoid in bra making

When I came to the anniversary of my first blog post on the making of bras, I started to write a really long winded post about some of the failures and successes of my bra making journey so far. It was so boring though, that I couldn't even bring myself to finish writing it, so I figured no one would want to read it either. I've taken some of the things I wanted to say, and come up with a list of common sense things to avoid when bra making. Learn from my mistakes, so you avoid making them.

Stashbusting Sewalong: August theme "Face your fears" - Swimsuit

Guess what? I'm a bit chuffed, because for the first time ever, I made a swimsuit! This month's stashbusting theme is all about facing what we fear in sewing. I had originally thought of cutting into some special fabric that I've been putting off using, but after some discussions on the Stashbusting group's Facebook page, I came up with something far more appropriate, and an actual real fear of mine: Lycra.

Lingerie: Cream Bra

It's been a while since I've had a big enough chunk of time to sew something for myself, and of course, my mind went straight to bra making. I had actually been putting off making my next bra, even though I knew what style I wanted, and what I would make it from. As I mentioned when I made my last bra, I made the decision to try a larger size underwire.

Organising my bra patterns

I recently completed a long overdue job of cleaning up and sorting out my bra patterns. Up until this, they had been living in a rather attractive cardboard box, inside a larger box of bra supplies. Now that I've made 13 bras, the pattern pieces are all starting to get a bit confusing. For my first few bras, I labelled the patterns V1, V2 etc. When I changed the wire size, I wrote the size as well, and then when I was still getting confused as to which was which, I came up with style numbers. But they were still all going in the box.

Bra Patterns in the box

Stashbusting Sewalong May 2015 roundup

How has your month been? What sewing did you get up to? Whatever it was, I hope you've managed to have a productive month. As usual, I had lots of things that I wanted to get done, and not much time to do it in. Top of my priorities though, was to get some lingerie sewing done. What kind of host would I be if I didn't?

Me Made May 2015 Round Up - Part II

For those who have come in part way through the Me-Made-Month of May, you can find the first half of the month's outfits here, with a bit of my rambling. So if you haven't read that yet, I recommend doing so now. I'll wait for you to come back! Continuing on, here are the outfits that I wore for the second half of the month.

May 16 - 19

Lingerie: White Silk Bra - Take II

As soon as I realised that my last white silk bra didn't turn out how I would have liked, I got to work on one that would.