Ugh, what a crappy holiday. I caught a cold on the 23rd, which then took a merry journey through all my insides throughout the festive season. I was ill with a cough, snotty sinuses, headache, chest infection, etc for the entire two week holidays. By Day 12 I dragged myself to the GP who gave me antibiotics lest it turn into pneumonia, and it was only on the final weekend that I started to feel a little bit better. But I feel like I deserve a holiday do-over in a few weeks – I got cheated out of so much time – there were so many things I wanted to go done…
I’m not sure why, but when I’m ill, I turn to sewing lingerie. Maybe the lace and pretty things bring me comfort, or maybe it’s that the small pieces don’t require standing up to go to the iron. Who knows! In any case, when I was able to sit up without feeling dizzy, I pulled out the Orange Lingerie Marlborough bra pattern again, this time to match a pair of Lacey Thongs I made last winter that have been waiting for a mate this long.
The colours are weird here – the photos below are more indicative of the true colours
I tried to sew a bra from this fabric and lace a while back, but it was an utter FAIL – not even good enough to document, just one for immediately cutting off the hardware and binning. So it took me a while to want to cut into the lace again – not until I had the success of my first Marlborough bra in fact!
I used some interesting fringed elastic from MacCulloch & Wallis as a feature on the Lacey Thongs, splitting it in half and using it as piping in addition to the waistband treatment. I also (clearly) used the stretch lace throughout instead of just on the wings, too.
I can’t recall exactly where I bought this lace from (it was that long ago), but it does have a bit more stretch than the yellow lace I used in my first bra, and it shows in the fit – the cups are a little looser than I’d prefer. Not so bad that it’s unwearable, just enough to serve as a reminder to definitely use non-stretch lace (or underlined!) next time.
I hardly was able to get anything done while ill, but I did manage this, though the green elastic on the bottom is a bit rippled and it’s not my neatest work. C’est la vie. At least it felt like an accomplishment and I can now wear these as a set (I’d been reserving the panties in the sewing room until a matching bra was done).
I had matching powder blue bits for pretty much everything but the underwire casings. They look white here, but they’re actually very pale aqua, leftover from my aqua bra and thong set.
I lined the entire bra using the same brought yellow/lime fabric as I used on the wings, so it’s really neat inside. It’s pretty easy to do this with bras, you just sandwich the layers when you sew a sew, fold to the right sides, topstitch, and then baste the edges. The only raw-edge seam inside is where the wings connect to the power bra, which is only a small seam in a place unlikely to rub anyway.
No photos of me wearing it, though, I’m afraid – I’m still feeling a bit crappy and the illness (nor resulting cheeseboard consumption) has not left me feeling particularly worthy of being a lingerie model!