After I completed my world tour, I had four and a half days at home to recuperate, so I of course spent a good portion of that in my sewing cave! The first of my finished garments is this bra, which I’m calling the “Eyelash” one because the layer of black lace on the top just made me think of the bra batting its eyelashes at me!
I used the same self-drafted/traced pattern as my third muslin, but with zero-stretch silk-cotton woven leftover from the slip I made almost exactly a year ago, and some black stretch lace I’ve had in my stash (not the same as I’d used in the slip, but that’s only noticeable if you squint really hard!).
The cups are fully lined and the wings/backs are made from a black power mesh that was in my lingerie sewing stash.
First I made each cups separately (two fronts and two linings). Then I basted the lace across the fronts and joined the fronts to the linings along the top edge. I could’ve then topstitched, but I opted to understitch instead, then basted around the other edges so the fronts and linings could then be treated as one for the rest of the construction.
Here you can see the cups as I was constructing them. You can see that the lace is hanging free, only really attached at the top edge, and for an inch or so at the sides. I carried on the lace motif over the bridge so it looks fairly seamless from afar.
One thing I noticed as I went to do the basting is that I didn’t get the curve quite right at the dart edge, so I corrected that on my pattern.
I’m about 90% happy with this bra. The fit feels really comfortable, and the silhouette looks really good, too. I think I could probably increase the coverage in the side-boob area, but it feels okay as-is, too. The only real issue is that there’s some pulling in the lower-centre area where there isn’t quite enough fabric to match the underwire curve:
After consulting with The Great and Wise Bra Guru Norma, we decided it’s probably not worth fretting over as my “rigid” laces actually have a little bit of stretch, and the issue may go away of its own accord!
So I was on to the next step: cutting into my turquoise lace!
Or so I thought, because when I got it out, I realised the lace is rather narrower than I remembered. *^&$%^$^%!
So I need to go back and convert my single-dart pattern to a two-piece cup, and muslin that again before sewing so I can use this narrower lace. Good thing I’ve got plenty of length of lace, it looks like I bought about 3 metres of it (overkill!).
And speaking of laces, my final (sniff!) delivery from the closing-down eLingeria.de arrived! (omg, tomorrow is their last day!!)
The green and blue lace on the left is stretch (so earmarked for Lacey Thongs!), but the green lace on the right is rigid (so unlined bras! I’d just use this instead of the turquoise lace, but I need to order more cream notions and Sewing Chest is on holiday). I also got some black and purple stretch lace, some black and dark purple yardage, and some motifs, too. And they threw in some random stretch lingerie fabric as a thank you, but it’s not very “me”, so I reckon it’ll go into muslin duty.
I wasn’t in the mood to do more bra muslin work, so I ended that day by finally taking in the waist of my black ponte knit trousers, something that took me ten minutes and made a world of difference! Why didn’t I do this months ago??